By Adam Voiland 8 November 2017(NASA) – Since mid-October 2017, smoke from crop fires in Punjab and Haryana has blown across northern India and Pakistan. With the arrival of cooler weather in November, the smoke mixed with fog, dust, and industrial pollution to form a particularly thick haze. A lack of wind, which usually helps […]
By Tim Wallace 12 October 2017 (Cosmos) – Just 10 rivers – eight of them in Asia – may be responsible for dumping almost four million tonnes of plastic into the seas every year.Calculating with precision the source and amount of plastic trash in the oceans is difficult; estimates tend to cover wide ranges. Previous […]
By Valerie Volcovici 12 November 2017 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States hopes to promote wider use of fossil fuels at a global meeting on climate change next week, a White House official said, reflecting the gaping divide between Washington and the rest of the world on the issue of global warming.President Donald Trump’s administration […]
By Scilla Alecci 8 November 2017 (ICIJ) – On the island of Padang, in the heart of Indonesia’s industrial logging country, a group of teenagers pointed to the charred remains of sago palm trees – the remnants of the fires that have scorched the archipelago nation’s lush forests for two decades. “There’s a sense of […]
By Claire Salisbury 9 November 2017 (Mongabay) – In 2012, Brazil celebrated a dramatic reduction in its deforestation rate. A sharp annual decline took forest loss to a record low, down 76 percent from 1990. Accomplishing this milestone — achieved alongside GDP growth and a major financial incentive scheme for reducing deforestation in collaboration with […]
By Chelsea Harvey 7 November 2017 (E&E News) – Scientists are worried about the effects of long-term warming on human health and infectious disease, but a new study finds a link between epidemics and a cold climate.By analyzing Chinese records throughout nearly 2,000 years of history—from between A.D. 1 and 1911—researchers have found that climate-driven […]
By Mark Buchanan 7 November 2017 (Bloomberg) – The latest U.S. government report on climate change illustrates how expensive the phenomenon can be: It estimates that more frequent flooding, more violent hurricanes and more intense wildfires, among other things, have cost the country $1.1 trillion since 1980.What’s particularly striking, though, is how much the report […]
11 October 2017 (KPMG) – Almost three quarters (72 percent) of large and mid-cap companies worldwide do not acknowledge the financial risks of climate change in their annual financial reports, according to the KPMG Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting 2017 published today.Of the minority that do acknowledge climate-related risk, less than one in 20 (4 […]
By Lisa Friedman8 November 2017WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – A Senate hearing on nominees for two top environmental posts on Wednesday quickly turned testy over the Trump administration’s ambivalence on climate change science. Andrew R. Wheeler, a lobbyist for Murray Energy, which is owned by Robert E. Murray, an Appalachian coal mining magnate and […]
By Sydney Pereira 11 November 2017Nearly two months after the Category 4 Hurricane Maria barrelled into Puerto Rico, 60 percent of Puerto Ricans still don’t have power.That number temporarily surged to 80 percent on Thursday morning, when a power line repaired by Whitefish Energy failed—wiping out power for millions of Puerto Ricans, reported BuzzFeed. Friday […]
