News Roundup
When the environmental group Greenpeace lost a nearly $670 million verdict this month over its role in oil pipeline protests, a quarter-billion dollars of the damages were awarded not for the actual demonstrations, but for defaming the pipeline’s owner.
Source: A Quarter-Billion Dollars for Defamation: Inside Greenpeace’s Huge Loss – The New York Times
‘The highest ever temperature has been recorded in Delhi, India, hitting 52.3C in northwest Delhi’s Mungeshpur area on Wednesday, reports the Times of India.’
Source: 52.3C in Delhi, highest ever temperature for capital – Carbon Brief
‘In 2023, Earth experienced its hottest year on record, and massive floods, wildfires, and other climate-related disasters affected millions of people around the world. Meanwhile, rapid and worrisome developments in the life sciences and other disruptive technologies accelerated, while governments made only feeble efforts to control them.’
Source: Current Time – 2024 – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
“Pope Francis will attend next month’s COP28, making him the first pontiff to attend the annual UN climate conference. It’s part of his wider effort to make climate action central to his papacy.”
‘Fossil fuel interests are trying to co-opt the battle against climate change, Al Gore warned on Thursday, noting that the United Nations had appointed a top oil executive, Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber of the United Arab Emirates, to lead this year’s global climate talks.’
Source: Al Gore Says Fossil Fuel Industry Seek to ‘Capture’ Climate Talks – The New York Times
‘The prospects of the world staying within the 1.5C limit on global heating have brightened owing to the “staggering” growth of renewable energy and green investment in the past two years, the chief of the world’s energy watchdog has said.’
The state of California has filed a sweeping climate lawsuit against Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron, as well as the domestic oil industry’s biggest lobby, the American Petroleum Institute.
Source: California sues oil giants, claiming they downplayed climate change for decades : NPR
‘The planet has broiled this summer, with July winning the unwelcome title of the hottest month since records began, in the nineteenth century. Indeed, climate scientists think that it was possibly the hottest month in the past 120,000 years. Given the rapid pace of climate change, however, July offered merely a taste of the heat to come. In 2015, world leaders established a goal to keep average global surface temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures in order to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. In July, global temperatures breached that critical ceiling, if only briefly. Nearly 5,000 local heat and rainfall records were broken in the United States alone; globally, the number exceeded 10,000. And scientists anticipate that 2023 will clock in as the hottest year on record.’
Source: The Age of Climate Disaster Is Here | Foreign Affairs
‘A catastrophic die-off of emperor penguin chicks has been observed in the Antarctic, with up to 10,000 young birds estimated to have been killed.’
Source: Climate change: Thousands of penguins die in Antarctic ice breakup – BBC News
‘A series of climate records on temperature, ocean heat, and Antarctic sea ice have alarmed some scientists who say their speed and timing is unprecedented.’
Source: Climate records tumble, leaving Earth in uncharted territory – scientists – BBC News