Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change

There was a pair of shoes from Pope Francis and sneakers from the United Nations secretary general, Ban-Ki Moon. Most were from ordinary citizens, like Gloria Montenegro, a 65-year-old Parisian, who left two pairs. All together, 11,000 pairs of shoes were on display in the Place de la République in Paris on Sunday morning in a silent demonstration – in place of cancelled...

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The Paris climate talks: Yes oui can!

On Monday, November 30, 2015, roughly 40,000 heads of state, diplomats, scientists, activists, policy experts, and journalists will descend on an airport in the northern Paris suburbs for the biggest meeting on climate change since at least 2009 — or maybe ever. The summit is organized by the United Nations and is primarily aimed at producing an agreement that will serve...

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Here’s how the U.S. can dump fossil fuels for good

Americans have often been told that meeting scientific climate targets is impossible without threatening jobs and costing a fortune. But a new report shows that the opposite is true. “The Clean Energy Future: Protecting the Climate, Creating Jobs and Saving Money,” by the respected economist Frank Ackerman and his colleagues at Synapse Energy Economics, shows that the...

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Scientists say Greenland just opened up a major new ‘floodgate’ of ice into the ocean

As the world prepares for the most important global climate summit yet in Paris later this month, news from Greenland could add urgency to the negotiations. For another major glacier appears to have begun a rapid retreat into a deep underwater basin, a troubling sign previously noticed at Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier and also in the Amundsen Sea region of West...

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How Indonesia’s fires became one of the world’s biggest climate disasters

One of the worst eco-disasters on the planet is currently unfolding in Indonesia. Over the past two months, thousands of forest and peatland fires have been raging out of control, covering the entire region in thick, toxic haze and smoke. The fires have been a public health nightmare, forcing widespread evacuations, killing at least 19, and triggering respiratory...

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ExxonMobil Targets Journalists and Activists After Climate Change Investigation

After an investigation found that ExxonMobil has been funding climate-denying organizations—despite the findings of its own scientists on climate change—the world’s fourth-largest oil company is now going after the journalists who revealed it. Evidence that ExxonMobil has been deliberately leading a campaign of misinformation about climate change for decades began...

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Exxon’s Climate Concealment

Millions of Americans once wanted to smoke. Then they came to understand how deadly tobacco products were. Tragically, that understanding was long delayed because the tobacco industry worked for decades to hide the truth, promoting a message of scientific uncertainty instead. The same thing has happened with climate change, as Inside Climate News, a nonprofit news...

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Massive Coral Bleaching Event Is Sweeping Across The World’s Oceans

For the third time in recorded history, a massive coral bleaching event is unfolding throughout the world’s oceans, stretching from Hawaii to the Indian Ocean. A group of ocean scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed this bleaching event is being brought on by a combination of a strong El Niño pattern, a warm water mass in the...

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Food Industry To Congress: We Need You To Act On Climate Change

Leaders from some of the world’s biggest food companies urged Congress to support a strong global agreement on climate action, in advance of the U.N. climate talks happening in Paris this December. In a letter published in both the Washington Post and Financial Times, the chief executives from Mars, General Mills, Unilever, Kellogg, Nestle, New Belgium Brewing, Ben...

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America’s wildfire crisis is getting worse. Here’s what Congress can do.

We have reached a new fire normal, a clear signal that a changing climate will inevitably require an adjustment to how we manage our forests if we wish to maintain the benefits they offer, such as providing half of our nation’s water supply. In response to this unprecedented wildfire risk, for the first time in its history, the U.S. Forest Service will spend more than...

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China Will Pony Up $3.1 Billion to Help Poor Countries Fight Climate Change

China followed up its promise to create the world’s largest cap-and-trade program with yet another significant climate policy announcement: It will commit to spending $3.1 billion to help developing countries slash their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change. China’s financial commitment, along with its new carbon market, are part of a...

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So what happens when America’s seniors find out what climate change means for their grandkids?

Few things strike fear into the hearts of politicians like a disgruntled grandparent entering a voting booth. Seniors wield immense political power in the United States, a fact made plain by their voting record. In the 2014 midterm elections, a year of historically low voter turnout, nearly 59 percent of adults aged 65 and older pulled the lever on Election Day. Just 23...

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California’s Historic Drought Is Now Officially Even More Historic

It’s been at least half a millennium since California has been this dry. The snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains — which provides nearly a third of the state’s water supply — is the lowest it has been in 500 years, according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change. The researchers compared blue oak tree rings during known time periods of precipitation,...

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Evidence Found of Climate Change Positive Feedback

A new study has confirmed the existence of a positive feedback operating in climate change whereby warming itself may amplify a rise in greenhouse gases resulting in additional warming. The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that in addition to the well understood effect of greenhouse gases on the Earth’s temperature, researchers can now confirm...

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Climate Change Means One World’s Death and Another’s Birth

A few years ago in a lab in Panama, Klaus Winter tried to conjure the future. A plant physiologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, he planted seedlings of 10 tropical tree species in small, geodesic greenhouses. Some he allowed to grow in the kind of environment they were used to out in the forest, around 79 degrees Fahrenheit. Others, he subjected to...

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Bees and flowers have a special relationship, and climate change is screwing it up

Climate change — as it is for pretty much all life forms — is a huge bummer for bees. If neonics and other pesticides weren’t enough to deal with, a recent study demonstrated that global warming has fueled drastic bee habitat loss, leading to a 200-mile reduction in their natural environments. Something out in the great abyss has it out for the buzzers (hint: it’s CO2)....

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Call It What It Is: A Global Migration Shift From Climate, Not a Migrant or Refugee Crisis

Hundreds more died off the coast of Libya this week, on the heels of 71 deaths of migrants trapped in the back of a truck near Vienna, Austria. At the same time, NASA officials just warned that rising global sea levels from climate change could affect coastal regions, including 150 million residents in Asia who lived “within a meter from the sea.” While news...

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Scientists try to replicate climate denier findings and fail

Does the Ted Cruz in you ever wonder whether global warming really is just a hoax? Whether skeptics really are the Galileos of our time? Whether climate scientists really do just want to make money? Well, wonder no more. A group of researchers just tried to replicate 38 peer-reviewed studies that support skeptic talking points, and surprise! They ran into some trouble....

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400 Alaskan villagers are set to be the first U.S. climate change refugees

Kivalina is a tiny, remote Alaskan village that sits on a barrier island some 83 miles above the Arctic circle, and the most recent estimates show the village—home to 400 people—will be entirely underwater by 2025. This is far from news for the island’s Iñupiat inhabitants; the village voted in favor of relocating way back in 1992. But as climate change thins the ice...

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The Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Already Here

Historians may look to 2015 as the year when it really started hitting the fan. Some snapshots: In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India each killed more than 1,000 people. In Washington state’s Olympic National Park, the rainforest caught fire for the first time in living memory. London reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit during the...

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Woodward County, Oklahoma: Why do so many here doubt climate change?

By John D. Sutter, CNN I was wandering around the rolling plains of northwest Oklahoma looking for one person – one person – who believes in climate change science when I met the woman dressed all in yellow. A wide-brimmed, lemon-colored hat orbited her head. Her loafers were the color of butter. Everything in between was a jubilee of sunshine. Could she be...

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The West Is Still On Fire

Just in time for peak tourist season, Montana’s Glacier National Park is on fire. As of July 28, some 3,200 acres of the park were engulfed by wildfire, which began a week ago and caused park officials to shut down three separate campsites throughout the park as well as close off the St. Mary Visitor Center. As of the 29th, the wildfire was 56 percent contained, and...

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New Report Reveals The Severe Economic Impacts Climate Change Will Have In The South

Climate change is set to hit the Southeast United States hard. That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Risky Business Project, a nonprofit that focuses on the economic impacts of climate change. The report, which focused on 12 states found that the increased heat and humidity that these states are expected to experience as the climate changes will put the region’s...

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13 Giant Companies Make Big Climate Pledges

Thirteen giant companies joined the Obama administration’s Act on Climate initiative, announcing at least $140 billion in new low-carbon investment and more than 1,600 megawatts (MW) of new renewable energy, the White House said. The pledge from Coca-Cola, Walmart, Apple, Google, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and other big-name companies comes in advance of the United...

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Fossil fuel companies impose more in climate costs than they make in profits

It is fairly well understood by now that releasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere imposes an economic cost, in the form of climate change impacts. In most cases, however, those responsible for carbon emissions are not required to pay that cost. Instead, it’s borne mainly by the world’s poor and low-lying countries, and of course...

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Earth’s Most Famous Climate Scientist Issues Bombshell Sea Level Warning

In what may prove to be a turning point for political action on climate change, a breathtaking new study casts extreme doubt about the near-term stability of global sea levels. The study—written by James Hansen, NASA’s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields—concludes that glaciers in Greenland and...

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India ‘will not announce’ carbon emissions peak year

Prakash Javadekar said that Delhi would submit plans to cut emissions to the UN, but would not announce a target date for when it expected its total carbon emissions to drop. His comments came two days after China told the United Nations that its emissions would peak around 2030. India is the world’s third largest carbon emitter, after China and the US. Scientists...

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China, Brazil, and the U.S. announce climate and clean energy goals

In a jam packed but complex day for international climate action, Brazil, the United States, and China — three of the world’s top 10 greenhouse gas emitters — all announced new goals on June 30, 2015. The commitments came in different forms and units, ranging from forest hectares to renewable energy gigawatts — but collectively appeared to represent a new and major step...

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