Mudslide fears haunt Los Angeles County neighborhoods burned by huge La Tuna fire

By Anthony Clark Carpio 12 November 2017 (Los Angeles Times) – Los Angeles County and federal officials have been busy preparing Burbank residents who live near the Verdugo Mountains hillside for future heavy rainfall, especially in areas that were adjacent to the La Tuna fire, which scorched more than 7,000 acres over Labor Day weekend.Recently, […]

U.S. to promote “universal access” to fossil fuels at climate talks

By Valerie Volcovici 12 November 2017 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States hopes to promote wider use of fossil fuels at a global meeting on climate change next week, a White House official said, reflecting the gaping divide between Washington and the rest of the world on the issue of global warming.President Donald Trump’s administration […]

From carbon sink to source: Brazil puts Amazon, Paris goals at risk

By Claire Salisbury 9 November 2017 (Mongabay) – In 2012, Brazil celebrated a dramatic reduction in its deforestation rate. A sharp annual decline took forest loss to a record low, down 76 percent from 1990. Accomplishing this milestone — achieved alongside GDP growth and a major financial incentive scheme for reducing deforestation in collaboration with […]

Records from ancient China reveal link between epidemics and climate change

By Chelsea Harvey 7 November 2017 (E&E News) – Scientists are worried about the effects of long-term warming on human health and infectious disease, but a new study finds a link between epidemics and a cold climate.By analyzing Chinese records throughout nearly 2,000 years of history—from between A.D. 1 and 1911—researchers have found that climate-driven […]

Global warming costs a lot more than we recognize, and most estimates ignore the sociopolitical repercussions

By Mark Buchanan 7 November 2017 (Bloomberg) – The latest U.S. government report on climate change illustrates how expensive the phenomenon can be: It estimates that more frequent flooding, more violent hurricanes and more intense wildfires, among other things, have cost the country $1.1 trillion since 1980.What’s particularly striking, though, is how much the report […]

Three quarters of companies worldwide yet to acknowledge global warming as a financial risk – “Even among the world’s largest companies, very few are providing investors with adequate indications of value at risk from climate change”

11 October 2017 (KPMG) – Almost three quarters (72 percent) of large and mid-cap companies worldwide do not acknowledge the financial risks of climate change in their annual financial reports, according to the KPMG Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting 2017 published today.Of the minority that do acknowledge climate-related risk, less than one in 20 (4 […]

Lights off in Puerto Rico as power outages and dirty water plague islanders after Hurricane Maria

By Sydney Pereira 11 November 2017Nearly two months after the Category 4 Hurricane Maria barrelled into Puerto Rico, 60 percent of Puerto Ricans still don’t have power.That number temporarily surged to 80 percent on Thursday morning, when a power line repaired by Whitefish Energy failed—wiping out power for millions of Puerto Ricans, reported BuzzFeed. Friday […]

2017 ties record for most billion-dollar weather disasters in the U.S. in a single year

By Cory Reppenhagen 10 November 2017 (KUSA) – This year has been the most disastrous weather and climate year on record – and it’s not even over yet.The California Department of Insurance just announced that losses incurred from the October wildfires exceeds 3 billion dollars, and is expected to rise even further. That has now […]

EPA staffers speak about the agency under Trump – “Do the opposite thing you did 18 months ago”

By Rachel Leven 10 November 2017 (Vox) – Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt doesn’t hide his contempt for how the agency has been run, but he does profess to care about one of its key programs: Superfund, which oversees the cleanup of the nation’s worst toxic waste sites. In April, he toured a site […]

Barbuda remains uninhabitable, two months after Hurricane Irma – “There has never been a hurricane like this in the Caribbean”

By Karen Chávez 11 November 2017 CODRINGTON, Barbuda (The Citizen-Times) – Carl Francis is a ghost of a man, shuffling slowly, sadly down the roads of a ghost town. Francis, a father of seven, barely lived through the historic rains and winds of Hurricane Irma, which two months ago landed like a bomb on Barbuda, […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial