News Roundup
‘A total of 28 trillion tonnes of ice have disappeared from the surface of the Earth since 1994. That is stunning conclusion of UK scientists who have analysed satellite surveys of the planet’s poles, mountains and glaciers to measure how much ice coverage lost because of global heating triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions.’
Source: Earth has lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice in less than 30 years | Climate change | The Guardian
‘Soaring temperatures, intensified flood risks and heightened water stress will threaten 57 U.S. nuclear plants over the next 20 years, forcing operators to take additional resiliency measures, according to a new report.’
Source: Mounting Climate Impacts Threaten U.S. Nuclear Reactors – Scientific American
‘Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden listed climate change among the major crises facing America as he seeks to rally Democrats heading toward the November election.’
Source: Biden calls climate change one of America’s four major crises | TheHill
‘Attribution science, at its most basic, calculates how likely an extreme weather event is in today’s climate-changed world and compares that with how likely a similar event would be in a world without anthropogenic warming. Any difference between those two probabilities can be attributed to climate change.’
‘Yet, when it comes to action we are still in a state of denial. The climate and ecological crisis has never once been treated as a crisis. The gap between what we need to do and what’s actually being done is widening by the minute. Effectively, we have lost another two crucial years to political inaction.’
‘…But concrete is also responsible for about 8 percent of global carbon emissions. If concrete were a country, it would rank third in emissions behind China and the United States.’
Source: Concrete, a Centuries-Old Material, Gets a New Recipe – The New York Times
‘…But if there’s one thing I took from Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention last night, it’s that fear is a natural reaction when your life is being threatened. And our lives are, point blank, being threatened. It’s time we started acting like it.’
Source: In defense of fear – HEATED
‘(CNN)Lucid, an electric vehicle company headed by former Tesla engineer Peter Rawlinson, has announced that its upcoming Lucid Air car is expected to get an EPA-rated range of at least 517 miles.’
‘When Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced climate “equity” legislation on Thursday, climate activists saw it as a hopeful sign of Democratic unity less than three months before a hugely consequential election with both the White House and the Senate up for grabs.’
‘The report authors say that their new estimate of the carbon emitted through thawing, and from losses of peat into rivers and streams, is 30-50% greater than in previous projections of carbon losses from permafrost thawing.’
Source: Climate change: Warming world will be ‘devastating’ for frozen peatlands – BBC News