Airpocalypse now: China pollution reaches record levels

By Tom Phillips, with additional reporting by Luna Lin8 November 2015 BEIJING (The Guardian) – Residents of north-eastern China donned gas masks and locked themselves indoors on Sunday after their homes were enveloped by some of the worst levels of smog on record. Levels of PM2.5, a tiny airborne particulate linked to cancer and heart […]

China burns much more coal than reported, complicating climate talks

[cf. Peak Coal in China? Not so fast –Des] By Tom Phillips, with additional reporting by Luna Lin 4 November 2015 (Beijing) – China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, has been dramatically underreporting the amount of coal it consumes each year, it has been claimed ahead of key climate talks in Paris. Official Chinese data, […]

Global drought: why is no one discussing fresh water at Cop21?

By Katherine Purvis16 September 2015 (The Guardian) – Around the world, fresh water supplies are drying up: California in the US and São Paulo in Brazil are enduring historic droughts, groundwater sources have been plundered in south Asia, and globally more than 750 million people lack access to safe drinking water. The global fresh water […]

Revealed: Attorney hounding climate scientists is covertly funded by coal industry – ‘He has been instrumental in orchestrating the attacks on climate scientists over the past decade’

By Lee Fang25 August 2015 (The Intercept) – Christopher Horner, an attorney who claims that the earth is cooling, is known within the scientific community for hounding climate change researchers with relentless investigations and public ridicule, often deriding scientists as “communists” and frauds. Horner is a regular guest on Fox News and CNN, and has […]

Study links China air pollution to 1.6 million deaths per year, roughly 17 percent of all deaths in China

By Dan Levin 13 August 2015 BEIJING (The New York Times) – Outdoor air pollution contributes to the deaths of an estimated 1.6 million people in China every year, or about 4,400 people a day, according to a newly released scientific paper [pdf]. The paper maps the geographic sources of China’s toxic air and concludes […]

Recession rather than shale gas caused US carbon cuts: study – ‘Substitution of gas for coal has had a relatively minor role’

By Simon Evans21 July 2015 (Carbon Brief) – It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that the shale gas revolution has led to a fall in US emissions. But what if that wasn’t true? New research published in Nature Communications suggests it was the global financial crisis, not fracking, that has done most to reduce […]

Graph of the Day: Lifetime CO2 output of proposed global coal-fired generating capacity

March 2015 (CoalSwarm / Sierra Club) – Because coal is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel and coal plants have a long lifespan, growth in coal capacity has major implications for climate stability. From 2004 to 2013, increased coal utilization outweighed all other sources combined, producing 62 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions growth from fossil […]

There are 2,100 new coal plants being planned worldwide — enough to cook the planet

By Brad Plumer 9 July 2015 (Vox) – Earlier this week, I wrote about the global coal renaissance — arguably the most important climate-change story in the world right now. Since 2000, developing countries like China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia have been building coal-fired power plants at a rapid pace. On the upside, this boom […]

The global coal renaissance is the most important climate story today – ‘If current trends continue, ambitious mitigation targets likely will become infeasible’

By Brad Plumer 7 July 2015 (Vox) – If you only focused on the United States, you might think coal’s days were numbered. The dirtiest of all fossil fuels once provided more than half of America’s electricity. That has since dropped to 39 percent, thanks to competition from cheap natural gas, a tireless campaign by […]

Green Climate Fund partners with Deutsche Bank, to green fury – ‘To partner with one of the largest private-sector coal financiers in the world is so far from this vision and mandate that it boggles the mind’

By Alex Pashley10 July 2015 (RTCC) – A UN piggy bank to help poor countries deal with climate change partnered with a leading coal funder on Thursday, sparking an outcry from green groups. At a meeting in its South Korean headquarters, the Green Climate Fund approved Deutsche Bank and 12 other financial entities to receive […]

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