Davos climate obsessions contain clues for policymaking – The environment has replaced the economy and finance on the global elite’s worry list

By Gillian Tett17 January 2019 (Financial Times) – What are the biggest risks stalking the world today? A cynic might gripe that the list is so depressingly long that it is pointless even to try to choose: populism, cyber attacks, trade wars, weather shocks and global debt are all on the rise. However, during the […]

The hottest 15 places in the world today are all in Australia as record heatwave rages on – Thousands of flying foxes dead – “One of the worst things is in the aftermath and you hear the mums calling out for their pups”

16 January 2019 (The Journal) – The top 15 hottest places in the world today are all in Australia as a severe heatwave continues to roast the southeast of the continent. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said the past four days were among the country’s top 10 warmest on record, with temperatures nearing 50 degrees […]

New global study reveals rising soil temperatures in permafrost regions around the world – “The permafrost isn’t simply warming on a local and regional scale, but worldwide and at virtually the same pace as climate warming”

16 January 2019 (AWI) – Global warming is leaving more and more apparent scars in the world’s permafrost regions. As the new global comparative study conducted by the international permafrost network GTN-P shows, in all regions with permafrost soils the temperature of the frozen ground at a depth of more than 10 metres rose by […]

Australia extreme heatwave continues – “code red” issued as Port Augusta hits 48.9C – Sydney is hottest place on Earth

By Lisa Cox15 January 2019 (The Guardian) – Port Augusta in South Australia has reached 48.9C on Tuesday, as a heatwave sets in across much of Australia threatening more record hot days. All-time highest minimum temperatures have also been broken in three places. Meekatharra in Western Australia and Fowlers Gap and White Cliffs in New […]

Antarctica losing six times more ice mass annually now than 40 years ago – “We expect multi-meter sea level rise from Antarctica in the coming centuries”

IRVINE, California, 14 January 2019 (UCI) – Antarctica experienced a sixfold increase in yearly ice mass loss between 1979 and 2017, according to a study published today in  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Glaciologists from the University of California, Irvine, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Netherlands’ Utrecht University additionally found that the […]

Global warming of oceans equivalent to an atomic bomb per second – Total heat taken up by oceans over the past 150 years was 1,000 times the annual energy use of the entire global population

By Damian Carrington7 January 2019 (The Guardian) – Global warming has heated the oceans by the equivalent of one atomic bomb explosion per second for the past 150 years, according to analysis of new research.More than 90% of the heat trapped by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the seas, with just a […]

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 […]

Data mining adds evidence that war is baked into the structure of society – “There is little evidence that humankind is progressing toward a more peaceful world”

4 January 2019 (Emerging Technology) – War is the subject of detailed study among historians, reflecting a general hope that by learning from the past, we can avoid similar mistakes in future. Many historians study war in terms of the actors involved and the decisions they make. It is often possible to describe how wars […]

Antarctic sea ice is “astonishingly” low this melt season

By Eric Holthaus3 January 2019 (Grist) – Right now, on the shores of Antarctica, there’s open water crashing against the largest ice shelf in the world. The annual ice-free season has begun at the Ross Ice Shelf — a month ahead of schedule. The frozen region of freshwater ice the size of France partially protects […]

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, […]

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