Smoke rises form chimneys of a steel plant in Ostrava, Czech Republic, Friday, 11 November 2022. High energy prices linked to Russia’s war on Ukraine have paved the way for coal’s comeback, endangering climate goals and threatening health from increased pollution. Photo: AP Photo / Petr David Josek

High energy prices lead to coal revival in Czech Republic – “The short-term effect is quite obvious: the air pollution will be worse because of the higher coal consumption”

By Karel Janicek 18 November 2022 OSTRAVA, Czech Republic (AP) – In this part of northeastern Czech Republic, huge piles of coal are stacked up ready to sell to eager buyers and smoke belches from coal-fired plants that are ramping up instead of winding down. Ostrava has been working for decades to end its legacy […]

Satellite view of the turf farm site in the Qatar desert, August 2021. World Cup organisers have created a large-scale tree and turf nursery, the largest turf farm in the world, according to the organisers, in the middle of the desert. It covers an area of 425,000 m2. While irrigation uses treated sewage water, the claim that this will absorb CO2 emissions from the atmosphere and contribute to reducing the impact of the event is not credible as this carbon storage is unlikely to be permanent in these artificial and vulnerable green spaces, while carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for centuries to millenia. Lusail stadium is the largest of the FWC stadiums, with a capacity of 80,000 seats. It is represented here to show the scale of the turf farm. Lusail stadium is not located next to the turf farm. Photo: Google Earth

World Cup 2022: The “mirage” of carbon offsetting

By Stéphane Mandard 19 November 2022 (Le Monde) – Organizers will have to buy 3.6 million carbon credits to compensate for emissions, according to FIFA. Carbon Market Watch says this estimate is too low – and a long way off. FIFA claims that the World Cup in Qatar will be the first to be “carbon […]

Waves lap the eroded beach below the half-collapsed homes of Nina Lavigna, at left, and her neighbor, after Hurricane Nicole swept away sand from the beach and from under foundations, Saturday, 12 November 2022, in Wilbur-By-The-Sea, Fla. Photo: Rebecca Blackwell / AP Photo

Florida county puts damage from Hurricane Nicole at $481 million – “The structural damage along our coastline is unprecedented”

DAYTONA BEACH SHORES, Florida, 14 November 2022 (AP) – Damages are estimated at more than $481 million in a central Florida coastal county where homes collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean following Hurricane Nicole last week. The damages from the category 1 storm in Volusia County, home to Daytona Beach, exceeded those from the much stronger Hurricane Ian, […]

Mexican journalists gather around pictures of murdered colleagues as they protest the recent killings of photojournalist Margarito Martinez and journalist Lourdes Maldonado, in Veracruz, Mexico, on 25 January 2022. Photo: Yahir Ceballos / Reuters

CPJ’s Global Impunity Index 2022: Vast majority of journalists’ killers go free – Of the 263 journalists murdered in the last decade, 78 percent were assassinated with complete impunity

By Jennifer Dunham1 November 2022 (CPJ) – The vast majority of killers of journalists continue to get away with murder, according to CPJ’s 2022 Global Impunity Index. In nearly 80% of the 263 cases of journalists murdered in retaliation for their work globally over the past decade, the perpetrators have faced no punishment.  Somalia remains […]

The Coca Cola logo is displayed next to the COP27 logo as the Coco Cola sponsorship of the 27th Annual United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27) is announced on 29 September 2022. Graphic: COP27

COP27: Corporate climate pledges rife with greenwashing, says U.N. expert group – “Too many of these net-zero pledges are little more than empty slogans and hype”

By Gloria Dickie and Simon Jessop 8 November 2022 SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) – Promises by companies, banks and cities to achieve net-zero emissions often amount to little more than greenwashing, U.N. experts said in a report on Tuesday as they set out proposed new standards to harden net-zero claims. The report, released at the […]

Absolute change in days of crop growth duration, 1981-2021, compared to a 1981-2010 baseline, globally and by WHO region. Maize, rice, soybean, spring wheat, and winter wheat are shown. Relative to 1981-2010, higher temperatures in 2021 shortened crop growth seasons globally by 9.3 days for maize, 1.7 days for rice and 6 days for winter and spring wheat, and heatwave days in 2020 were associated with 98 million more people reporting moderate to severe food insecurity. Graphic: The Lancet

8 billion people: Four ways climate change and population growth combine to threaten public health, with global consequences

By Maureen Lichtveld 10 November 2022 (The Conversation) – Will we have enough food for a growing global population? How will we take care of more people in the next pandemic? What will heat do to millions with hypertension? Will countries wage water wars because of increasing droughts? These risks all have three things in […]

A man from the Maasai pastoralist community affected by the worsening drought due to the failed rainy season, attends to an emaciated cow at a livestock market in Ilbisil settlement of Kajiado, Kenya, 17 October 2022. Photo: Thomas Mukoya / REUTERS

Climate disasters put plight of displaced in COP27 focus – “Drought kills the plants, it kills everything, and then the rain comes washes away your homes”

By Gloria Dickie; editing by Katy Daigle and Ros Russell 13 November 2022 SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) – Issack Hassan lives in a migrant camp in Baidoa city in Somalia – one of more than a million people displaced since January after five successive failed rainy seasons. With Somalia in the grips of its worst […]

Near-surface temperature differences relative to the 1981–2010 average for 2022 to September. The map shows the median anomaly calculated from six data sets: HadCRUT5, ERA5, JRA-55, GISTEMP, NOAAGlobalTemp, and Berkeley Earth. Graphic: WMO

State of the Global Climate 2022: Sea level rise accelerates, European glacier melt shatters records, extreme weather causes devastation – “What climate scientists have warned about for decades is upon us”

By Seth Borenstein 6 November 2022 SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) – Earth’s warming weather and rising seas are getting worse and doing so faster than before, the World Meteorological Organization warned Sunday in a somber note as world leaders started gathering for international climate negotiations. [Eight warmest years on record witness upsurge in climate change impacts –Des] […]

Projections of GHG emissions under different scenarios to 2050 and indications of emissions gap and global warming implications over this century (medians only). Looking beyond 2030, this figure projects global GHG emissions out to 2050 under different scenarios and indicates the associated global warming implications over this century. The figure illustrates the substantial increase in the emissions gap for 2050 if climate efforts implied by current policies and NDC scenarios are continued without further strengthening. Implementation of net-zero targets by around mid-century would significantly reduce these gaps, but even then, gaps with the 1.5°C scenarios would remain. Graphic: UNEP

UN: Inadequate progress on climate action makes rapid transformation of societies only option – “It is a tall, and some would say impossible, order to reform the global economy and almost halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, but we must try”

NAIROBI, 27 October 2022 – As intensifying climate impacts across the globe hammer home the message that greenhouse gas emissions must fall rapidly, a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report finds that the international community is still falling far short of the Paris goals, with no credible pathway to 1.5°C in place. However, the Emissions Gap Report […]

Heat-related deaths in Maricopa County, Arizona, 2001-2022. The temperature hit 110F or higher on 22 days in 2022, yet it was only the 20th hottest summer on record, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). It did not drop below 80F on 75 percent of nights between June and August. Heat effects are cumulative, and the body cannot begin to recover until the temperature drops below 80F. Data: Maricopa County, office of vital registration and office of medical examiner, Arizona department of health services. Graphic: The Guardian

Summer 2022 was deadliest on record for heat-related mortality in Arizona’s biggest county – Maricopa County’s 359 heat-associated fatalities in 2022 outpace 339 deaths in 2021

By Anita Snow 25 October 2022 PHOENIX (AP) – This summer was the deadliest on record for heat-associated fatalities in Arizona’s largest county amid a growing wave of homelessness. Public health statistics this week confirmed a record 359 such deaths just days before the end of the six-month heat season. The jump in deaths raises questions about […]

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