Florida’s Coastal Everglades, deprived of fresh water, near unhealthy “tipping point”

By Jenny Staletovich13 February 2017 SHARK RIVER (Miami Herald) – At the bottom of the Everglades along the mouth of the Shark River, a towering mangrove forest stands in a place few people outside anglers and researchers ever see: at the edge of a vast shallow bay where the salty sea and freshwater marshes conspired […]

Carbon capture needed to make carbon dioxide emissions fall – Wind and solar alone won’t meet Paris Agreement goals

By Ker Than30 January 2017    (Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment) – Without a significant effort to reduce greenhouse gases, including an accelerated deployment of technologies for capturing atmospheric carbon and storing it underground, and sustained growth in renewables such as wind and solar, the world could miss a key global temperature target set by […]

Even the most efficient coal plants put global climate goals out of reach

Brussels, Belgium, 14 April 2016 (Ecofys) – Event the most efficient coal plants are not compatible with the global climate change goals, a new study reveals. As world leaders prepare to sign the Paris Agreement on climate change next week, a report [pdf] from Ecofys published today shows that any coal-fired power generation will take […]

No country on Earth is taking the 2 degree climate target seriously

By David Roberts 4 October 2016 (Vox) – One of the morbidly fascinating aspects of climate change is how much cognitive dissonance it generates, in individuals and nations alike. The more you understand the brutal logic of climate change — what it could mean, the effort necessary to forestall it — the more the intensity […]

Soil will absorb less atmospheric carbon than expected this century – ‘The problems of carbon emission and climate change are worse than what we expected’

IRVINE, California, 22 September 2016 – By adding highly accurate radiocarbon dating of soil to standard Earth system models, environmental scientists from the University of California, Irvine and other institutions have learned a dirty little secret: The ground will absorb far less atmospheric carbon dioxide this century than previously thought. Researchers used carbon-14 data from […]

Unravelling the myth of a carbon budget for keeping global warming below 1.5°C

By David Spratt9 September 2016 (Climate Code Red) – The 2015 Paris climate talks put the 1.5°C temperature target firmly on the policy-making table, whilst also signing off on actions consistent with 3°C or more of warming. This has prompted more discussion in the climate movement about the emissions reduction task consistent with 1.5°C, and […]

Permafrost carbon: Catalyst for deglaciation

By Andrew H. MacDougall22 August 2016 (Nature Geoscience) – Between 17,500 and 14,500 years ago, a period sometimes referred to as the Mystery Interval1, atmospheric CO2 concentrations began their post-glacial rise from about 190 ppm in glacial times to approximately 270 ppm by the beginning of the Holocene. The rise in CO2 during the Mystery […]

Zombie carbon emissions haunt the planet – ‘We’re losing the ability to really solve the climate crisis’

By Amrith Ramkumar28 July 2016 (Bloomberg) – Deforestation in the Amazon region dropped by 30 percent  from 2005 to 2010, sparing trees that soak up carbon dioxide. A big win in the fight against climate change, right? Maybe not big enough to save the planet, or the species on it. After trees are cut down, […]

Drought stalls tree growth and shuts down Amazon carbon sink

6 July 2016 (University of Exeter) – A recent drought completely shut down the Amazon Basin’s carbon sink, by killing trees and slowing their growth, a ground-breaking study led by researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Leeds has found. Previous research has suggested that the Amazon – the most extensive tropical forest on Earth […]

At 1,066 feet above rainforest, a view of the changing Amazon

By Daniel Grossman6 June 2016 (Yale e360) – We set off before dawn with my guide, Elton Mendes, steering a battered pickup through the Amazon jungle. He reached a hand out of the window and tugged on a stick tied to the wipers, squeegeeing drizzle off the windshield. After a short drive, he parked by […]

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