News: ‘General’ Archive
‘…According to an analysis of their public statements and votes, 90 of the 147 Republican members of Congress who voted to overturn the results of the presidential election explicitly deny or have denied that climate change is human-caused and dangerous.’
Source: Lawmakers who denied Biden’s victory also embrace a deadlier conspiracy: climate denial – HEATED
‘…For those of us who cover climate change for a living, the blatant lies about election fraud that fed the mob felt very familiar. A big part of our job is dealing with the disinformation that people and institutions spread to muddy the waters about climate change.’
Source: The Capitol Riot and Climate Disinformation – The New York Times
‘Five nuclear reactors are expected to close in 2021 which will set a record for the most nuclear capacity retirements in one year, reflecting competition from cheaper sources of renewable energy and low natural gas prices, according to the Department of Energy.’
Source: Record number of nuclear power plants set to close in 2021 – Midland Reporter-Telegram
‘…The record warmth — which fueled deadly heat waves, droughts, intense wildfires and other environmental disasters around the world in 2020 — occurred despite the development in the second half of the year of La Niña, a global climate phenomenon marked by surface cooling across much of the equatorial Pacific Ocean.’
Source: 2020 is Tied With 2016 as Hottest Year Ever on Record – The New York Times
‘…Single-use plastic is a climate change issue — as well as an observable, measurable menace to the environment that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic and the need for plastic protective gear. Most plastic is made from fossil fuels, and millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions are released from the extraction of these resources, and the manufacture and incineration of plastic.’
Source: Hey, Joe Biden, plastic trash is a climate issue too – Los Angeles Times
‘…People caused the climate crisis, of course, but the definition of which people gets more precise over time. Research indicates that the wealthiest ten per cent of the world’s population—those with net incomes above thirty-eight thousand dollars a year—account for more than half of all carbon emissions. The wealthiest one per cent produce more than twice the carbon that the poorest fifty per cent do. But the effects of climate change are unjustly reversed: the less you did to cause it, the sooner and harder you feel its effects.’
‘Parts of the world economy may have been on pause during 2020, dampening greenhouse gas emissions for a while. But that didn’t slow the overall buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which reached its highest level in millions of years.’
The eye-catching headline is quite important and should be examined further, beyond the quick overview in comments like this one:
‘Recent research shows that stopping greenhouse gas emissions will break the vicious cycle of warming temperatures, melting ice, wildfires and rising sea levels faster than expected just a few years ago.’
Many people will be pleasantly surprised to learn that eating beans can improve the climate – and reduce emissions!
‘To understand why the climate impact of beef alone is so large, note that the image at the top of this story is a sea of soybeans in a silo in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. The beans belong to a feed lot that holds 38,000 cattle, the growth and fattening of which means dispensing 900 metric tons of feed every day. Which is to say that these beans will be eaten by cows, and the cows will convert the beans to meat, and the humans will eat the meat. In the process, the cows will emit much greenhouse gas, and they will consume far more calories in beans than they will yield in meat, meaning far more clearcutting of forests to farm cattle feed than would be necessary if the beans above were simply eaten by people.’
Source: If Everyone Ate Beans Instead of Beef | The Atlantic
‘Big Basin — and big swaths of California — are still recovering from historic wildfires that ravaged the state this year, displacing tens of thousands of people and wildlife, burning more than 4 million acres and killing at least 33 people. They also ripped across groves of giant, coastal, old-growth redwoods here in the Santa Cruz Mountains. And while these trees are incredibly resilient, there’s concern that even they may find it harder to rebound amid the mounting impacts of climate change.’
Source: California’s Ancient Redwoods Face New Challenge From Wildfires And Warming Climate : NPR
‘Scientists with the Copernicus Climate Change Service said that global temperatures in November were 0.1 degree Celsius (about 0.2 degree Fahrenheit) above the previous record-holders, in 2016 and 2019. November 2020 was 0.8 degree Celsius (or 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average from 1981 to 2010.’
Source: November’s Global Temperatures Are Highest Ever, Breaking Records – The New York Times