Fresno water table has fallen 25 feet in seven years – ‘I like fish, but I’m not giving up my lawn for some smelt. Let those fish die up north. There’s a cycle of life.’

By Nelson D. Schwartz6 MAY 2015 FRESNO, California – When residents of this parched California city opened their water bills for April, they got what Mayor Ashley Swearengin called “a shock to the system.” The city had imposed a long-delayed, modest rate increase — less than the cost of one medium latte from Starbucks for […]

California forests have become net climate polluters – ‘The losses are outpacing the growth. The key element here is wildfire.’

By John Upton 29 April 2015 (Climate Central) – California introduced a world-leading carbon dioxide cap-and-trade program to drive down pollution rates after lawmakers approved an ambitious climate protection law in 2006. It also changed rules affecting utilities, spurring investments in some of the biggest solar power plants the world has yet seen. But an […]

Scientists to analyze ‘the Blob’ at Scripps Oceanography Workshop

30 April 2015 (Scripps Institution) – A workshop on an unusually warm pool of North Pacific Ocean water and associated conditions will take place May 5 and 6 at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. Participants in the 2014-2015 Pacific Anomalies Science and Technology Workshop will include federal, non-federal, state and local scientists and […]

Climate change to cause the extinction of one in six species by 2100

By Geena Fowles4  May 2015 (America Herald) – A massive 16 percent of our planet’s species may be facing extinction by 2100 as a result of the havoc that climate change is wreaking, a recent study published in Science states. According to a team of researchers, the ever-increasing temperatures will contribute to the wipe-out of […]

Report: Global emissions goals still aren’t enough to prevent dangerous warming

By Chelsea Harvey4 May 2015 (Washington Post) – When it comes to combating climate change, many scientists and policy makers focus on one major goal: cut carbon emissions enough to keep the planet’s average surface temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above its pre-industrial level. But a new analysis [pdf], published on Monday […]

U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions increase in past two years

By Perry Lindstrom20 April 2015 (EIA) – For the second year in a row, energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the United States have increased. However, unlike 2013, when emissions and gross domestic product (GDP) grew at similar rates (2.5% and 2.2%, respectively), 2014’s CO2 emissions growth rate of 0.7% was much smaller than the […]

How to misinterpret climate change research – Research into the cooling impact of aerosols sends climate contrarians into a tailspin

By Gayathri Vaidyanathan23 April 2015 (Scientific American) – Slivers of dust float in the upper atmosphere, scattering the sun’s rays back into space and cooling the planet in some places. In other places, the particles warm the planet. The equivocation has meant that the particles, known as aerosols, are a significant wild card in our […]

Places to visit before they’re ruined forever by climate change

By Tanya Lewis24 April 2015 (Business Insider) – Earth Day, which was on April 22 this year, is a time to celebrate and protect the pale blue dot we call home. But some of its crown jewels may be vanishing. Many parts of the globe face threats from warming temperatures, sea level rise, drought, and […]

Apple Inc. carbon footprint rises despite green measures

20 April 2015 (NBC News) – Apple is more energy efficient than it ever has been, according to a new report, with 100 percent of U.S. operations running completely on renewable energy. Still, the company was responsible for 34.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in fiscal 2014 — the vast majority from manufacturing […]

Half of Vanuatu residents lack clean water, month after Cyclone Pam: UNICEF

By Magdalena Mis; Editing by Tim Pearce 22 April 2015 LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – More than 100,000 people in Vanuatu have no clean drinking water, a month after a monster cyclone struck the tiny Pacific nation, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Wednesday. Two thirds of the archipelago’s water and sanitation infrastructure […]

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