In climate change fight, Brazil owes nothing, minister says

By Simone Preissler Iglesias, Mario Sergio Lima, and Bruce Douglas8 January 2019 (Bloomberg News) – Brazil owes nothing in the fight against global climate change and should be paid for its work so far, according to the country’s new environment minister. For Ricardo Salles, the Paris Accord in itself is neither good nor bad, but […]

U.S. carbon emissions surged in 2018 even as coal plants closed – “We haven’t yet successfully decoupled U.S. emissions growth from economic growth”

By Brad Plumer8 January 2019 WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – America’s carbon dioxide emissions rose by 3.4 percent in 2018, the biggest increase in eight years, according to a preliminary estimate published Tuesday. Strikingly, the sharp uptick in emissions occurred even as a near-record number of coal plants around the United States retired last […]

Millions of tons of debris from California’s Camp fire needs to go somewhere — but no one wants it

By Laura Newberry7 January 2019 (Los Angeles Times) – The long road to recovery in the town of Paradise starts with removing millions of tons of charred rubble left in the Camp fire’s wake. But the question remains: Where will it all go? Disaster officials are scrambling to secure a place to sort and process […]

One dead in Tropical Storm Pabuk, most powerful storm to hit Thailand in 30 years and first tropical cyclone on record so early in the year

By Clyde Hughes4 January 2019 (UPI) – One person died Friday as Thailand was hit by Tropical Storm Pabuk, the most powerful storm to hit the country in three decades. The storm made landfall in Nakhon Si Thammarat, about 380 miles south of Bangkok on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula — with sustained […]

Worst mass extinction event in Earth’s history was caused by global warming analogous to current climate crisis

By Mike Gaworecki3 January 2019 (Mongabay) – New research by scientists at the United States’ University of Washington and Stanford University suggests that the most destructive mass extinction event in Earth’s ancient history was caused by global warming that left marine life unable to breathe. The Permian period, the last period of the Paleozoic Era, […]

Thousands stranded on Thai islands as rare tropical storm hits – “It’s quite scary being here because we don’t know what’s going to happen and there is no way to leave”

By Helen Regan, Kocha Olarn, and Laura Smith-Spark4 January 2019 Krabi, Thailand (CNN) – Thousands of people were left stranded on Thailand’s southern gulf coast as Tropical Storm Pabuk made landfall on Friday. Authorities had moved to suspend all flights and ferry services ahead of the storm, which officially made landfall in the Pak Panang […]

All-time U.S. precipitation records in 2018 – Five states and 24 cities had wettest year on record

By Bob Henson3 January 2018 (Weather Underground) – In a post on December 29, we noted a number of U.S. cities that had already secured their wettest year on record. Now that 2018 is a wrap, it’s time to circle back and see how the final totals turned out.Here are some of the larger towns […]

Methane release from beneath Greenland’s melting ice sheet rivals major world rivers

By Lauren C. Andrews2 January 2019 (Nature) – Sediments beneath glaciers and ice sheets harbour carbon reserves that, under certain conditions, can be converted to methane, a potent greenhouse gas. However, the formation and release of such methane is an unquantified component of the Arctic methane budget. Writing in Nature, Lamarche-Gagnon et al.1 present direct […]

Brazil’s new far-right government issues decrees across sectors – Indigenous land claims handed over to Agriculture Ministry

By Anthony Boadle2 January 2019 BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s new President Jair Bolsonaro set to work quickly on Wednesday, with his administration issuing decrees affecting the economy, agriculture and society, while forging closer political ties with the United States. Bolsonaro, a former army captain and seven-term congressman, won elections in October and was sworn in […]

Can a Democrat win the U.S. presidency on climate change? “We have two existential threats right now: one is to our natural systems, and one is to our economic systems”

By Edward-Isaac Dovere 2 January 2019 OLYMPIA, Washington (The Atlantic) – What if a meteor were hurtling toward the Earth, about to kill millions and reshape life on the planet as we know it? And what if the president, instead of doing anything to help, made it worse in just about every way, and called […]

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