Blogging the End of the World™
By Danica Coto 18 February 2018 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Associated Press) – Puerto Rico’s power company said Sunday that it will reduce its operating reserve to save money amid a cash shortfall as officials warned that the move could destabilize the U.S. territory’s fragile electrical grid. William Rios, director of generation at Puerto Rico’s […]
By Katie Weeman and Patrick Lynch; Edited by Mike Carlowicz 20 February 2018 (NASA) – Global sea level rise has been accelerating in recent decades, according to a new study based on 25 years of NASA and European satellite data. This acceleration has been driven mainly by increased ice melting in Greenland and Antarctica, and […]
By Chris Mooney 14 February 2018 (The Washington Post) – A draft United Nations climate science report contains dire news about the warming of the planet, suggesting it will likely cross the key marker of 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, of temperature rise in the 2040s, and that this will be exceedingly difficult […]
By Martin Arnold 6 February 2018 (Financial Times) – Central banks must clamp down on bitcoin and stop such cryptocurrencies “piggybacking” on mainstream institutions and becoming a “threat to financial stability”, the head of the Bank for International Settlements has warned.Agustín Carstens, general manager of the BIS — known as the bank for central banks […]
By Ryan Beene, Alan Levin, and John Lippert 9 February 2018 (Bloomberg News) – President Donald Trump’s administration is looking at ways to reduce future fuel economy standards for automobiles in a move to appease carmakers, who have asked to ease targets put in place under President Barack Obama.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is […]
By Chris Mooney 7 February 2018 (The Washington Post) – The much-heralded demise of the coal industry may be overstated, a new scientific analysis asserts — finding that if all planned plants were constructed, the world would have little chance of meeting its climate change goals. The new study, by Ottmar Edenhofer of the Mercator […]
12 February 2018 (MSNBC) – President Trump released his fiscal 2019 budget on Monday, 12 February 2018. Steve Rattner says the country’s budgetary outlook is “potentially apocalyptic”. Photo: MSNBC Rattner: Deficits headed for $2 trillion
By Lisa Friedman 12 February 2018 (The New York Times) – The Trump administration on Monday moved to repeal one of the last unchallenged climate-change regulations rushed into place in the waning days of the Obama presidency — a rule restricting the release of planet-warming methane into the atmosphere. The rule, which applied to companies […]
15 February 2018 (NOAA) – Emissions from volatile chemical products like perfumes, paints and other scented consumer items now rival vehicles as a pollution source in greater Los Angeles, according to a surprising new NOAA-led study.Even though 15 times more petroleum is consumed as fuel than is used as ingredients in industrial and consumer products, […]
By Josh Gabbatiss 3 February 2018 (The Independent) – Toxic nitrogen dioxide emissions around major ports and sea routes in the UK are four times higher than previously suggested, according to a report for the Government. Levels of sulphur dioxide, another harmful pollutant, are three times higher. Experts say shipping pollutants, which are concentrated around […]
