Top EU companies urge drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions – ‘We want a global climate deal that achieves net zero emissions – make it happen’

By Alister Doyle and Geert De Clercq, with additional reporting by Michel Rose and Jessica Chen; Editing by Ahmed Aboulenein and Pravin Char21 May 2015 PARIS (Reuters) – Top European companies urged governments on Thursday to set a goal of slashing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero well before 2100, saying that going green can […]

Germany’s 2020 greenhouse gas target is no longer feasible

[To my eyechrometer, it looks like progress halted in 2009. It’s possible that this curve has bottomed out, and Germany can’t reduce carbon emissions further without restarting its nuclear plants. –Des] 21 May 2015 (Carbon Counter) – Some of us are slow learners. In 2011, Germany made the decision to shut 8 nuclear reactors and […]

Graph of the Day: Exponential production from the Athabasca bitumen mines, 1985-2014

23 May 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Recently, Canada announced that it will reduce carbon emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by the year 2030. But the province of Alberta is home to the Athabasca bitumen mines, aka the “Alberta tar sands” mines. The disastrous environmental effects of Alberta’s open pit mines have been […]

California forests have become net climate polluters – ‘The losses are outpacing the growth. The key element here is wildfire.’

By John Upton 29 April 2015 (Climate Central) – California introduced a world-leading carbon dioxide cap-and-trade program to drive down pollution rates after lawmakers approved an ambitious climate protection law in 2006. It also changed rules affecting utilities, spurring investments in some of the biggest solar power plants the world has yet seen. But an […]

Report: Global emissions goals still aren’t enough to prevent dangerous warming

By Chelsea Harvey4 May 2015 (Washington Post) – When it comes to combating climate change, many scientists and policy makers focus on one major goal: cut carbon emissions enough to keep the planet’s average surface temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above its pre-industrial level. But a new analysis [pdf], published on Monday […]

Climate scientist: Climate hacking is ‘barking mad’

By Raymond T. Pierrehumbert10 February 2015 (Slate) – Some years ago, in the question-and-answer session after a lecture at the American Geophysical Union, I described certain geoengineering proposals as “barking mad.” The remark went rather viral in the geoengineering community. The climate-hacking proposals I was referring to were schemes that attempt to cancel out some […]

2013 record heatwave in Australia ‘virtually impossible’ without global warming – ‘What you consider an extreme heat event now would be a normal summer by the middle of the century. You don’t want to live in that world.’

By Stephanie Anderson  7 February 2015 (ABC) – A new report by the Climate Council of Australia says it would have been “virtually impossible” for 2013 to be the hottest year in the country’s record without man-made emissions in the atmosphere. The independently-funded group used new modelling to look at the odds of extreme heat […]

Steps taken on climate change in 2014

By Michael E. Mann5 December 2014 As the mercury rose in 2014, so did reasons to be thankful. Climate change is the kind of thing that makes you feel plenty of emotions, but usually gratitude is not one of them. This year, though, something is different. Though there have been plenty of record-hot months this […]

Graph of the Day: World ecological footprint of human consumption

(UNDP) – Over the years there has been much debate about what sustainability means and about what measures can track sustainable progress— or the lack of it. In 2012 the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio took a broad view that sustainable progress must cover all three dimensions that affect people’s life chances—social, […]

Leaked: The oil lobby’s conspiracy to kill off California’s climate law

By Brad Wieners      25 November 2014 (Bloomberg Businessweek) – […] As they say, it’s not paranoia if they really are out to delay, rewrite, or kill off a meaningful effort to reduce the build-up of carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere. A Powerpoint (MSFT) deck now being circulated by climate activists—a copy of which was sent […]

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