Climate change

Over the past number of months, extreme weather, wildfires, and other events have brought the immediacy of the climate emergency to light –both in BC, ...

A range of strategies and tools are needed to reduce the associated health harms, and British Columbia’s doctors are uniquely positioned in these efforts. Physicians can play a valuable role in communicating the population health impacts of climate change, as well as contributing to strategies to reduce potential harms. Over the past number of months, extreme weather, wildfires, and other events have brought the immediacy of the climate emergency to light –both in BC, and on a global scale.

How much do your actions as an individual matter when it comes to climate? The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from the ...

The scientists nod to the climate strikes that have given voice to youth in more than 180 countries, which help build social trust and citizen-led networks. In a school cafeteria or restaurant, the way a menu or choices are presented can make a difference in how people decide what to eat. Offering households a financial reward for energy efficiency had the biggest effect; after that, providing consumers with more information on their energy usage, and a benchmark to compare it to, also had a measurable medium-sized effect over the short-term period that most of these studies covered. “To those of us who are in that privileged category, we have a huge responsibility to respond and to do all that we can to immediately solve this problem,” Creutzig said. That’s the scale that we can really engage because people can see the broader impact of collective action.” But the science body noted that the pandemic is proof that broad, structural behavioral change can and does happen. The top 10 percent is a broad category that includes more than the jet-fliers and yacht-owners. The pandemic has supported that rapid collective change in behavior is possible. And while hard data and peer-reviewed science show individual actions do matter, ultimately, the world has to think beyond the individual carbon footprint in addressing the climate crisis, including thinking about how individuals can bring about structural change. So the bottom line of the IPCC’s first look at individual action is this: By reexamining the way we live, move around, and eat, the world has the potential to slash up to 70 percent of end-use emissions by 2050. But there are things individuals can do at work and in their communities that will do more to push structural change. In other words, a single person taking well-meaning steps to lessen their footprint doesn’t change the fact that billions of people are living off fossil fuels.

Human-caused climate change and agriculture are wiping out the planet's insect populations, new research finds.

She is the co-founder of Ethos, a digital and e-commerce platform focused on personal and planetary sustainability through a luxury lens. “The magnitude of those changes is quite high,” Outhwaite said. The number of insect species showed a 29 percent decline, particularly in tropical regions. The recent installment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment also called for urgent reductions in emissions. The goal was assessment of rising temperatures and land use and their impacts on insect populations. The researchers from University College London looked at more than 750,000 records on nearly 20,000 different insect species including bees, beetles, grasshoppers, and butterflies, over 20 years from 1992 to 2012.

Climate change impacts the most vulnerable first and worst and that's why Oxfam is making sure that climate action is central to our fight against ...

3. Black and Indigenous people face the worst impacts of climate change, which causes heat waves, storms, and other disasters. For example, due to the effects of climate change an estimated 13 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia have been displaced in search of water and pasture, just in the first quarter of 2022, despite having done little to cause the climate crisis. It is time that our elected officials give it the urgency, attention, and investment that is necessary.

Insects that pollinate crops, cycle nutrients into soil, and eat pests are linchpins in the ecosystems that produce food.

Why it matters: The private airings by Mayorkas, recounted by lawmakers, belie his public posturing that the administration is prepared for a potential influx of migrants. A White House official told Axios Flournoy is departing for "personal reasons." (Agriculture and other changes in land use can alter the microclimate in an area.) Why it matters: Insects that pollinate crops, cycle nutrients into soil, and eat pests are linchpins in the ecosystems that produce food. But, "whether it is as dire as some say, we don’t have enough data to say one way or another." Driving the news: Flournoy has been with the team from the beginning and is the highest-ranking of the VP's office to leave amid a flurry of other significant departures in the last several months.

Mangroves, salt marsh, and seagrass beds, known collectively as “blue carbon” ecosystems, are especially efficient at removing carbon dioxide from the air and ...

The protection and restoration of coastal wetlands such as salt marsh present an opportunity for incorporating nature-based solutions on the state and national levels. Protecting and restoring salt marshes, as well as creating space for them to move inland away from rising seas, are ways that countries and states can ensure that salt marsh persists in the face of climate change. Like U.S. states, countries around the globe can also look to their salt marsh habitats to bolster coastlines against the effects of climate change. However, the report notes that to be most effective, these ecosystems need sufficient space to expand, or migrate, inland and warns that as sea levels rise, coastal wetlands such as salt marsh are at risk of being inundated and converted to open water. To survive, wetlands must have enough space, free from barriers such as roads and seawalls, to migrate and avoid being overtaken by the ocean. The report, drafted by more than 270 leading experts from 67 countries, analyzes the feasibility of various climate adaptation measures and highlights coastal wetlands’ ability to protect against coastal erosion and flooding.

Carbon dioxide emissions tend to acidify oceans making aquatic species and marine habitats more vulnerable to declines and damage. This ocean acidification ...

The goal is to adopt proper implementation of global strategies that can ensure marine and coastal protection and the conservation of the global oceans in general. The WMO in particular also collaborates with the Food and Agriculture Organisation to understand the impacts of climate change on marine productivity and fisheries. More than hundred countries across the globe responsible for a majority of these emissions, have made national climate commitments and pledges to curb their impacts on the environment. With the Paris Agreement, the recent COP26 summit in Glasgow among others, we can definitely say that we are off to a good start. While 30% of the land on Earth is classified as areas of particular importance for biodiversity protection, in order to reverse the extinction crisis, there needs to be an additional 20% of land that needs to be conserved. To surmise, greenhouse warming has complex and perhaps, severe impacts on the ocean than on land. Countries have also started developing policies and implementing sustainable practices which can conserve the oceans and protect fisheries and marine habitats. On the other hand, La Niña events have also seen a build-up in recent years, and tend to have complex impacts on weather patterns particularly in the Pacific Ocean. Both El Niño and La Niña events are part of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), where the former brings warming effects while the latter brings significant cooling or changes in winter seasons in the Pacific regions. The cumulative impacts of deforestation, agricultural runoff, overexploitation of marine resources, overfishing and more also weaken marine ecosystems of the world. Oceans are known to absorb most of the solar energy reaching the Earth, and warming of the oceans is generally slower than the atmosphere, resulting in moderate coastal weather with few hot and cold extremes. While oceans tend to influence regional and weather conditions around the world, changes in the climate can also have profound impacts on the oceans. Oceans absorb almost 90% of the extra energy from greenhouse gas effects, and this has resulted in ocean warming at depths of 1,000 metres.

The team compared insect biodiversity in different areas depending on the intensity of agriculture in each area, as well as how much historic climate warming ...

Where 75% of the land was covered by natural habitat, insect abundance only declined by 7%, compared to a 63% reduction in comparable areas with only 25% natural habitat cover. They found that in areas with high-intensity agriculture and substantial climate warming, the number of insects was 49% lower than in the most natural habitats with no recorded climate warming, while the number of different species was 29% lower. The researchers analysed a large dataset of insect abundance and species richness from areas across the globe, according to a spokesperson from UCL.

Trees, if anything, do the best job to help the earth. They absorb CO2 by their leaves, store it in their bark or roots, or turn it into oxygen, but trees are ...

The climate is changing fast. Climate change is becoming a bigger problem by the second. If we work together, we can slow down and even stop climate change. This is terrible for the environment. *Ice-free Arctic. Arctic sea ice recedes every summer, but still covers millions of square miles of ocean today. When you buy things that took trees — paper, books, wood — try looking for a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) label, which means that this company plants a tree for every one cut down.

Across its 17 chapters, it examines climate change mitigation efforts in use (or pledged for use) in everything from agriculture and transport, to energy supply ...

Climate change is a direct result of more than a century of ignored warnings and and unsustainable approaches to using precious resources. Researchers at ETH’s Future Cities Laboratory believe that part of the answer to this is to enable a circular loop within the urban landscape. The authors say that it could “transform cityscapes from their current status as net sources of GHG emissions into large-scale, human-made carbon sinks.” A paper referenced in the report suggests that constructing timber buildings for 2.3 billion urban dwellers (between 2020 and 2050) could store between 0.01 and 0.68 Gt CO2 per year, depending on a number of factors, including the average floor area per capita. This has prompted many to begin a drastic rethink of the materials supply chain, and of the construction, operation, and demolition cycle. A particularly good example of this is the dominance of private cars seen in many urban areas. More than half of the global human population now live in these areas, and that proportion is forecasted to increase to nearly 70% by 2050. The materials most associated with mid- and high-rise urban construction – namely, concrete, steel, aluminum, and glass – all come with significant carbon (and environmental) cost, despite steady improvements in their production efficiency. Smart (and distributed) electric grids are also enabling a more sustainable approach to electricity supply and demand. There is arguably a fourth strategy too – behavioral change – though, this often follows on from the successful implementation of the other three. The huge range of approaches reflects the fact that the causes of climate change are numerous – though, it should be said, we humans are to blame for all of them – and tackling it will take a multi-pronged approach. Across its 17 chapters, it examines climate change mitigation efforts in use (or pledged for use) in everything from agriculture and transport, to energy supply and manufacturing. We are living in a climate crisis, and the time for action is now.

Global warming is occurring at different rates at different places on Earth. This is due to geophysics and the complexity of Earth's climate systems.

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that differences in ocean and atmospheric warming are not explained by climate change science. This is also why surface air temperatures over land are warming more quickly than surface air temperatures over the ocean, he said. "There is no single value of temperature change expected for the oceans and atmosphere. While they warm at different rates, both the atmosphere and ocean are warming due to human activity. "If scientists were all correct then rises in ocean temperature and all atmospheric datasets would all be the same – but they are not." According to NASA, 90% of global warming is occurring in Earth's oceans.

Time-lapse imagery shows the damage climate change has already done to our planet.

As a result, beef is five times more damaging to the climate than white meat and 11 times more than wheat, rice and potatoes. Farmers need around 28 times the land to produce beef over pork or chicken and 11 times the water, according to a 2014 study. In the US, cars and trucks account for almost one-fifth of emissions, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

While climate change is already applying pressure on world insect populations, scientists have found that combined with intensive agricultural, ...

The findings of this study also demonstrate the importance of having large and diverse natural habitats adjacent to agricultural land to ensure insects are not dependent on a single seasonal crop species. “In areas with high-intensity agriculture, there is usually a low diversity of plants. Tropical areas in particular saw the biggest declines in insect biodiversity linked to land use and climate change.

Earth Day 2022 Google Doodle: Throughout the day, the doodle images will change to represent different locations of the earth and the impact of global ...

Several events and campaigns are being held worldwide to demonstrate support for environmental protection. Earth Day is an international event celebrated around the world to pledge support for environmental protection. Each image will remain on the homepage for several hours at a time.

Can you solve drought by piping water across the country? Is the weather becoming more extreme than scientists predicted? What kind of trees are best to plant ...

NASA scientists, among others, have calculated that any cooling effect would be overwhelmed by the warming effect of all the greenhouse gases we have pumped, and continue to pump, into the atmosphere. The reality is not that clear cut: If the presence of those cryptominers disincentivizes oil and gas companies from piping away that gas to be used elsewhere, any savings effect is blunted. That keeps the number of batteries, and the weight, down. To measure temperatures at the sea’s surface, for instance, the most common method before about 1940 was to toss a bucket overboard a ship, haul it back up with a rope and read the temperature of the water inside. Some researchers put the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave in that category, and are working to figure out whether they need to re-evaluate some of their assumptions. How can we possibly have reliable measures of global temperatures from back then, keeping in mind that oceans cover about 70 percent of the globe and that a large majority of land has never been populated by humans to any significant degree? Given “unexpected” extreme events like the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave and extreme heat in Antarctica that appear to shock scientists, it’s difficult for me to trust the I.P.C.C.’s framing that we haven’t run out of time. The idea of taking water from one community and giving it to another has some basis in American history. And some 2,500 chemical sites are in areas at risk of flooding, which could cause those chemicals to leach into the groundwater. And research “suggests these disruptions to the vortex are happening more often in connection with a rapidly warming, melting Arctic, which we know is a clear symptom of climate change,” said Jennifer A. Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. Where the extreme cold occurs depends on the nature of the disruption to the polar vortex. The connection between climate change and extreme cold weather involves the polar jet stream in the Northern Hemisphere, strong winds that blow around the globe from west to east at an altitude of 5 to 9 miles.

Cities are responsible for over 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet cities can also do a lot to mitigate climate change and help people adapt to its ...

The children pointed out that they lived in cities such as Cape Town (South Africa), Lagos (Nigeria) and Tabarka (Tunisia) where the impacts of climate change are on the rise. But, without robust action and engagement of children at the local sphere of government, the commitments become empty noise. The Climate Change Act (2016) of Kenya is very clear on the obligations of institutions at the city level in relation to climate governance. I argue that cities can do more to protect children from the impacts of climate change. In a recent study, I explored how city-level climate law and policy protects children in the context of climate change. Almost 1 billion children – nearly half of the world’s children – live in countries that are at extremely high risk of climate change impacts.

Earth Day this year is based on the theme "invest in our planet" amid strong signs from the planet as wildfires, intense floods, and changing climate ...

The major economies of the world, including the US, are yet to deliver on their commitments towards a $100 billion per year climate fund. US Climate envoy John Kerry had said that President Joe Biden is committed to increasing U.S. funding to developing countries to help with climate change. Earth Day this year is based on the theme "invest in our planet" amid strong signs from the planet as wildfires, intense floods, and changing climate threaten its survival.

Prof. Dana Fisher examines how — and whether — ordinary people can make an impact on the global problem through activism.

At the same time, we have this history of stewardship of the land and the idea of how to give back to the land and give back to other people is built into the Jewish tradition. To take a stand as Jews is important in terms of representation and also important when we think about movement-building. I grew up in a mildly Conservative to Reform family so we were very much like a standard kind of progressive northeastern Jewish American family. In and of itself, getting arrested is relatively resource-intensive, and it doesn’t have a positive effect on mitigating climate change. Some activist groups might be less excited about the kind of work that I want to do because it will tell a better picture, but it may also redirect tactics in ways that may not get too much media attention. I was brought in as what’s called a contributing author, which is the lowest level of author and we’re frequently brought in when a chapter’s authors recognize that something’s missing and needs to be added. People power like that can take advantage of what constituents, say American Jews, already care about, and use them to pressure these economic interests to make sure they follow through on their commitments. One of the things I have been doing is with the folks trying to build the Civilian Climate Corps. When people do service work to try to help the environment, how do we measure what that means? There are a small number of studies that have tried to do that. Climate change is a process that is changing the physical world, but it’s having a huge impact on society, affecting migration, refugees, and so forth. The Arctic has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the world since 1988. Her insights might not make some activists in the climate movement happy.

Climate-induced stock shifts are causing more overfishing, illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing, discarding, higher fuel use, injustice and even armed ...

EDF is committed to addressing these climate-induced fishery problems by researching and promoting solutions that can be effectively and equitably translated to the regions around the world in which we work. However, this can result in misalignment between catch privileges and the actual distribution of the fish when the fish move, leading to many of the problems described above. The Marine Stewardship Council has also recognized the challenge that climate change will present for fishery management and is researching ways to improve its policies to ensure fair quota allocation. Dynamic spatial management is another method of aligning fishery management with the realities of altered oceans under climate change. At the same time, other fishermen who may not have participated in such stewardship efforts may reap the benefits of the conservation and management efforts to which others have dedicated their lives. This increases fuel use and fishing costs and increases the risk of human and labor rights abuses as fishing vessels are forced to stay at sea for longer periods of time in potentially unsafe conditions. And militarized incursions into disputed territories in the South China Sea are leading to heightened geopolitical tensions in this already politically fraught region. Opposing claims to emerging fishing waters in the melting Arctic are leading to the potential for physical altercations as Arctic nations converge on these new fishing grounds. For example, the distribution of juvenile fish is changing, presenting challenges for temporal fishing ground closures designed to enhance juvenile survivorship. In these cases, fishers may be tempted to venture into these protected zones and potentially harm the vulnerable resources enclosed within them. At the same time, fishers in the regions where species are newly abundant may also be overfishing the stock in the absence of appropriate catch limits. Warming temperatures, lower pH levels and many other factors are causing many fish species to shift to better habitats and others to shrink in abundance.

Earth Day is recognised across the planet as a chance to raise awareness of the environmental crisis we all face.

“Now is the time for the unstoppable courage to preserve and protect our health, our families, our livelihoods.” “This is the moment to change it all – the business climate, the political climate, and how we take action on climate,” the Earth Day website states. The theme of Earth Day 2022 is “Invest in Our Planet”.

President Joe Biden's ambitions to finally put the U.S. on the path to confront climate change are crashing into an election-year scramble to lower gas ...

Last month, Biden announced he would release 1 million barrels of oil a day from the country’s strategic reserve, one of several steps to cut gas prices soon. And as the White House tries to starve Moscow of the funds it needs to wage its war in Ukraine, Biden is pushing countries to stop buying Russian oil and gas. They pointed out that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland had used her discretion to significantly cut the amount of land being offered and raise the royalty rate companies must pay. The White House recently greenlighted exporting more U.S. gas to Europe, a step that requires building costly new export terminals that are likely to stay in use for years — even if the current crisis ends. Biden’s newfound focus on lowering gas prices in the near term has opened up rare divisions between his administration and environmental groups, who largely cheered his efforts in his first year to recommit the U.S. on climate change. But the spending proposal died, taking more than half a billion dollars in climate funding with it, denying Democrats what would have been their biggest legislative achievement to run on ahead of the midterms. But there have been no signs of serious, advanced negotiations — including with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a must-have vote — and time is quickly running out before the campaign season makes legislating in Congress nearly impossible. Yet some energy analysts have questioned that logic, arguing that building mammoth new solar and wind farms is not a viable solution to bring down energy costs immediately. “The problem they have is the energy reality we face just doesn’t square with the quick transition that they would like to sell. But that means increasing global production of gasoline, just when Biden is trying to wean the U.S. off fossil fuels. Yet this week, Biden reinstated rules requiring big infrastructure projects to undergo complex reviews for environmental and climate effects before they can get started, a step that could cause significant delays. “It’ll ensure we’re no longer reliant on petrostate autocrats,” Sittenfeld said.

Europe endured record extreme weather in 2021, from the hottest day and the warmest summer to deadly wildfires and flooding, the European Union's climate ...

While Earth's surface was nearly 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels last year, Europe saw an average increase of more than two degrees, a threshold beyond which dangerous extreme weather events become more likely and intense, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said. The warmest summer on record featured a heatwave along the Mediterranean rim lasting weeks and the hottest day ever registered in Europe, a blistering 48.8C (120F) in Italy's Sicily. Europe endured record extreme weather in 2021, from the hottest day and the warmest summer to deadly wildfires and flooding, the European Union's climate monitoring service reported today.

EU scientists admit the previously unthinkable temperatures of 48.8C in Italy and 47C in Spain recorded last year could go even higher given the nature of ...

I won’t give a timeframe, but, for sure, this is not going to be the last temperature record we’ve seen in Europe.” In the affected parts, the heatwave lasted for two to three weeks. The Mediterranean experienced an intense and prolonged heatwave in July and August, Copernicus said, with several countries, including Turkey, Greece, and Italy experiencing severe wildfires that destroyed hundreds of thousands of hectares of land.

After decades of treating business leaders as the enemy, many environmentalists have come to the realization that if we want to save the planet, we cannot ...

That is a recipe for all of us to end up in the red. the reality of their net zero promises, undercutting their credibility with both governments and environmentalists. They must agree to complete transparency on their environmental and climate impacts and without the phony net-zero claims. In the five-plus decades since the first Earth Day, the global environmental community has filed tens of thousands of lawsuits against corporations and corporations have sued back to block environmental regulations. Simply put, it is going to take a lot more than governments, environmentalists, and individuals can provide to solve the climate problem. Yet compromises have often been possible, and environmentalists also work collaboratively with both corporations and governments to transform industries where there are mutual environmental and economic benefits such as the transformation of the lighting industry to LEDs, supporting renewable energy incentives, and forest certification standards.

The Earth's average temperature has increased by more than 1C during the 20th and 21st century.

Global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment. “Earth’s climate record, preserved in tree rings, ice cores, and coral reefs, shows that the global average temperature is stable over long periods of time. The Met Office defines a heatwave as at least three consecutive days of temperatures above a certain level. The threshold for a heatwave is 25ºC for most of the country. In March, the Met Office changed the definition of a heatwave to reflect how climate change is already affecting the UK. Climate change is already having a significant effect on our planet, and the importance of taking action is highlighted on Earth Day.

Climate change can feel confusing, big and scary. Trust us: We get it. Just take a deep breath, and let it back out again (it will be full of carbon dioxide ...

The consensus among scientists is that we are in an era of global heating and extreme weather events, primarily due to the devastating effects of human ...

“[B]y increasing communication from the health system, by promoting healthier lifestyles, we on the one hand promote behavior shifts that determine low-carbon transitions and facilitate those low-carbon transitions. But […] the response to climate change, and commensurate investment, remains inadequate,” it concludes. That alters hydrological cycles and generates other impacts on the climate [and] on our environment that add to the whole combo that we call ‘climate change’.” “One of the most cited examples of how infectious diseases are changing [is] in so-called arthropod-borne diseases. For example, a study that appeared in PNAS in 2019 looked at how efficiently the immune systems of mice reacted to influenza viruses under different temperature conditions. “[Pandemics are] going to happen more and a key driver of this is climate change. “So what happens [as a result] is that, as heat from the Sun reaches the Earth, they act like a blanket, they trap the heat inside the Earth’s atmosphere, and that makes the temperatures go up. “[G]reenhouse gases that have been accumulating in the atmosphere due to human activity are gases like carbon dioxide [and] methane. As climates change animals will change their distribution; they’ll probably group together more allowing viruses to jump more easily between them. So that also is posing limits on […] food productivity,” stressed Dr. Romanello. In our latest installment of the In Conversation podcast, we discuss these aspects at length with two key experts. Why are researchers concerned, and what are the implications for health?

The time lapses show how climate changes is affecting the whole world, from Greenland to the Great Barrier Reef.

Google Doodle said: “Today’s annual Earth Day Doodle addresses one of the most pressing topics of our time: climate change. The theme of Earth Day 2022 is “Invest in Our Planet” and the organisation will host the Earth Day Climate Action Summit, where its leaders will share solutions that will help deliver the greenhouse gas reductions needed by 2030 to meet the Paris Agreement. “Using real time-lapse imagery from Google Earth Timelapse and other sources, the Doodle shows the impact of climate change across four different locales around our planet.”

To mark the nation's 52nd Earth Day, Robert Feder, MD, outlines how climate change will exacerbate mental health challenges and the importance of global ...

The first is the direct impact of changes in climate on mental health. Concerns about climate change are now showing up in therapists’ offices.6 Despite accumulating knowledge about how to help with these problems,7 the number of “climate informed” therapists remains low. 7. Feder R. A brief guide to individual therapy for climate-related mental distress. 1. Climate change 2022: Impacts, adaption, and vulnerability. In addition, rising ambient temperatures are associated with higher suicide rates3 and growing emergency room mental health visits.4 The New York Times. Published February 6, 2022. Climate change escalates mental health issues in 2 ways. In addition, there will be a large loss of human habitat through rising sea levels and temperature increases. 6. Barry E. Climate change enters the therapy room. Improved access to mental health services, an increase in the number of mental health providers, and a reduction in the use of fossil fuels will all be necessary to meet this challenge. Approximately 37% of American people currently live in areas that have serious problems with access to mental health care.8 This is likely to get significantly worse in the coming decade as global temperatures warm and climate change creates increasing demand for mental health services. This results in significant psychiatric morbidity with new incidences of posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety, as well as exacerbation of pre-existing mental disorders.

Climate change is contributing to rising losses from natural disasters, including increased damage to physical assets and disruption to business operations.

Models can also be used to sensitivity test the implemented protection measures against future climate conditions and a comprehensive range of high impact scenarios. When we think about the damage from recent natural disasters, it is important to place climate change in the wider context of what is contributing to rising losses. This includes the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, a global network of business leaders from various industries developing cost-effective solutions to transitioning to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy. Many of the dangerous and costly manifestations of climate change are already here. But for other perils — tornadoes, hurricanes, and other windstorms— the impact is less clear. Climate science is a fast-evolving field of study, and while projections of future environmental outcomes remain uncertain, the need for investments in long-term resilience strategies has never been clearer.

Mount Kilimanjaro, Sermersooq, Great Barrier Reef, Harz Forests featured in the doodle.

The southwest monsoon contributes 74.9 per cent to the annual rainfall in India and irrigates over half of India’s agricultural land. Selected comments may also be used in the ‘Letters’ section of the Down To Earth print edition. “Quantitatively, the monsoon seasonal (June to September) rainfall is likely to be 99 per cent of the LPA with a model error of ± 5 per cent. It noted that currently, the southwest monsoon is passing through a ‘dry epoch’ which started in the decade of 1971-80. You can further help us by making a donation. Google, which records over 8 billion searches every day, has dedicated its daily doodle to Earth Day several times since the feature was rolled out in 1998. We are a voice to you; you have been a support to us. Scientists have attributed the loss to global warming as well as change in land-use, mostly deforestation. Rising temperatures and severe drought are responsible for this loss of green cover. The images were gathered from The Ocean Agency, an international non-profit that works on marine conservation. You can further help us by making a donation. We are a voice to you; you have been a support to us.

Climate risk disclosure encompasses two major types of risk, physical and transition. Transition risks are tied to greenhouse emissions, such as a company's ...

The second is to use weather analytics to prepare and mitigate weather impacts. Not only to plan maintenance work and operation safety, but also to better protect and prepare its citizens for extreme weather events. While not carbon emissions, road pavement forecasting is also helpful for the environment through eliminating unnecessary chemical treatments which have shown to contaminate drinking water and harm the environment. Conversely, the physical risks, which include extreme weather events, sea level rise and changes in climate patterns, have been more challenging for companies to report. The theme for Earth Day this year is “ Invest in Our Planet” which calls for everyone – from individuals, to businesses and governments – to take action to reduce the impact on our environment. First is by identifying current and future risks to a company’s assets, operations, and personnel safety before an event.

President Biden today will sign an executive order designed to safeguard old-growth forests as the White House has faced criticism from environmental activists ...

Unfortunately, the past 33 years have underscored the tremendous momentum of business as usual, and business as usual will produce a climate hostile to humanity and most of the plants and animals we depend on to live. Clock Four marks the understanding of climate change in the world of business and finance, including the economics community, the markets, and investors. With the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, fossil fuel and allied interests poured large amounts of money into campaigns linking climate change action to the liberal agenda. Aware of the upsurge in interest in environment during that year, Bush vowed to be the environmental president. This fourth clock is perhaps the least well examined and least well understood of the causes of our present dilemma, but it is also the most important. With a couple of exceptions, this clock lags even the public in terms of appreciation of the threat. Clock Three marks the progress of public appreciation of the threat. This clock shows that human-caused climate change has been with us since the 1980s, and that the changes have been accelerating. In the scientific realm, there is a lag built into the very structure of scientific inquiry. As climate scientist Richard Alley put it, the old view was that climate change was a dial; the new view, a switch. Out of that wave of alarm came a toothless agreement called the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which went into effect in 2005. The panel, which included pioneering climate scientists Roger Revelle and George Woodwell, presented him with a paper in 1979 that warned that if we didn’t take action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, we would see changes in climate by the end of the 20th century.

Twitter is banning advertisements that promote climate change denial in an effort to curb the reach of groups seeking to downplay the extent of the ...

Google similarly announced a move to ban advertisements that contradict scientists’ understanding about the existence and causes of climate change. In recent years, tech companies have been introducing new labels and information hubs to elevate accurate information about the environment while taking steps to limit the spread of falsehoods. “We recognize that misleading information about climate change can undermine efforts to protect the planet.”

Zoe Schurman has been an activist since she was 9 years old. Her foray into politics began when she was a campaign volunteer for Sen.

“The problem with addressing the issue of climate change and climate justice is that you really want to be able to plant the seed of the conversation,” Montgomery said. Good news is in short supply when it comes to talk of climate change, so much that it can cause people to freeze or become numb and incapable of processing the situation, let alone take action. She began composting and avoiding plastics to reduce waste but focusing on changes in individual behavior — or “personalizing” the crisis, as she put it — can lead one away from community action and policy change. The warnings from scientists are impossible to ignore: Humanity is making the planet uninhabitable for billions as climate change becomes irreversible. This month, the IPCC published the third and final installment of its sixth assessment report. Proponents point out that not all countries suffer the impacts of climate change equally. “It’s about decolonizing the narrative so that there isn’t just one narrative.” “We’ve seen a lot of these national trends playing out in the state,” Bostrom said. “We’ve shifted from wondering whether the climate crisis is real or not, to thinking about how to take action,” Schurman said. Pushes for climate policy by President Joe Biden and Gov. Jay Inslee have drawn the public’s attention but not necessarily participation. “I don’t see a huge increase in urgency.” Projections showed the same residents scoring anywhere between 5% and 20% higher than the national average across the board when it comes to their beliefs on climate change, risk perception and policy support.

Climate change campaigners kicked off a wave of protests for Earth Day today, pushing demands such as an end to building fossil fuel infrastructure.

Parts of Lviv were hit this week by Russian missile strikes that killed seven people. "We know that at least 1,300 people die in Ireland from poor air quality every single year. The protests aim to amplify demands for climate action on Earth Day, when people worldwide celebrate and mobilise in support of protecting the environment. It is to symbolise blood covering a currency that they say is fuelling both climate change and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "Individual action can make a difference but it genuinely is systematic change that is going to make a fundamental difference in terms of climate change." They said it needed to be accessible and free as "we are in a cost of living crisis". It also needed to be green because "without that, what is the point?"

In Africa, the climate crisis is threatening the livelihoods of millions and the availability of food and water. In recent years the continent has seen economic ...

He said the funds come with conditions and restrictions that make it difficult for the nations to use them in ways they would prioritize. Fredrick Owino works with 16 African countries on how best to increase and preserve forests as one of the ways to mitigate global climate change. In recent years the continent has seen economic and population growth that has led to environmental degradation while suffering extreme climatic events such as floods, heatwaves and drought.

Companies use AWS services in creative ways to build local and global innovations designed to address the climate.

Retailers can replace products, change colors and configurations, and swap entire item sets with the click of a button. Climate change is a key ESG issue, and retailers are actively looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprints and reach net-zero emissions targets in the next few years. Creating and selling a product involves a long chain of transactions, with each one contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. Hexa is an AWS Partner and 3D commerce and augmented reality (AR) expert. ArcGIS StoryMaps is a story-authoring, web-based application that allows users to share their maps in the context of narrative text and other multimedia content. Although Costa Rica accounts for only 0.03% of the Earth’s surface, it’s home to nearly 6% of the world’s biodiversity. According to The Nature Conservancy, 83.6% of people live in urban areas. Pairing robust EO datasets with modeling leads to more accurate and relevant predictions of how ecosystems behave and might evolve. Climate Next featured The Nature Conservancy’s work to reduce tree disparity in Los Angeles. They built MOIA using AWS services, including Internet of Things (IoT) that powers the vans’ sensors and let MOIA collect data and continually improve performance. One of the greatest counterforces to climate change is nature. The app’s user interface (UI) includes pick-up and overall trip times, stops en route, walking duration needed to complete the journey, and vehicle number.

Twitter announced a new policy on Earth Day: it now bans ads pushing climate denial. The company says conversations about sustainability and climate change ...

Google told The Verge at the time that it reviewed the content and decided to take “appropriate enforcement actions.” Facebook has also come under fire for failing to label climate misinformation despite its policy on flagging such content. Talk about “sustainability” on the platform has grown by over 150 percent since 2021, Twitter says. Twitter also said that it will soon share more details about how it plans to “add reliable, authoritative context” about climate change on its platform.

As the effects of the earth's changing climate have become more pronounced over the past few years, with natural disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, ...

Cities of the Northeast and Northwest could see their populations rise by roughly ten percent as Americans flee overly hot, flooded, or otherwise dangerous regions. In fact, the global south is the predominant host of all categories of forcibly displaced people worldwide, be they refugees or climate migrants: roughly 85% of refugees are displaced from and hosted within global south settings. Importantly, however, the report noted that most climate migration will take place within a country’s own borders rather than internationally.

Twitter's announcement on Earth Day came as it tries to fend off an unwanted takeover bid by billionaire Elon Musk, who has said he thinks people should be ...

Twitter last year introduced a Topic feature to help users find conversations about climate change, and rolled out hubs of "credible, authoritative" information on an array of high-profile topics including the science backing climate change. "We believe that climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis." "Misleading advertisements on Twitter that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change are prohibited, in line with our inappropriate content policy," Twitter global sustainability manager Casey Junod said in a blog post.

Andrew Kanes and a team of other researchers highlighted how growing populations of Needle Ants could disrupt the environment in the Great Smoky Mountains.

The IPCC's latest climate report discusses how colonialism has shaped climate, a breakthrough for the climate justice movement.

What is already clear is that the links between climate change and colonialism are legion, and involve confronting an uncomfortable range of legacies. There has also been a steadily growing body of literature demonstrating the connections between climate change and colonialism since the IPCC completed its fifth report in 2014. It’s a message that also acknowledges how the climate justice movement has long campaigned for the recognition of the unequal effects of climate change on different groups of people. Researchers have shown, for example, that the scale of bushfires in Australia today – including the catastrophic fires of 2019-20 – is not being exacerbated by climate change alone. Colonialism, the report asserts, has exacerbated the effects of climate change. For the first time in the institution’s history, the IPCC has included the term “colonialism” in its report’s summary.

Twitter has teamed up with Stripe for cryptocurrency payments to stars of its platform and has also banned adverts that deny the reality of climate change.

Stripe will do the behind-the-scenes work to enable a "select group" of popular Twitter figures to get paid in USDC stable coin pegged to the US dollar, the companies said in the post. Stripe - founded by Limerick brothers John and Patrick Collison - revealed the news in a blog post. It comes as online payments giant Stripe said it will start letting Twitter stars get paid in a dollar-pegged form of cryptocurrency in the latest endorsement of digital money.

This CBS News/YouGov survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample of 2,062 U.S. adult residents interviewed between April 5-8, 2022. The sample ...

The level of concern about climate change among those who report having experienced extreme weather is similar across geographic regions of the country. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, as well as to 2020 presidential vote. Those splits remain, but extreme weather experiences do shape views.

'When you have determination and sovereignty over land and water, and we can exercise our right to protect land and water, then we will see less extraction, ...

To mark the occasion, here's a look at what recent Pew Research Center surveys have found about Americans' views on climate change and renewable energy sources.

A smaller share (36%) says collective action globally will likely be enough to avoid the worst impacts from climate change, while another 10% say they don’t view climate change impacts as a problem. About six-in-ten liberal Democrats (63%) say the U.S. should phase out fossil fuels completely, compared with 36% who prefer the country use a mix of fossil fuels and renewables. Around six-in-ten U.S. adults (59%) say the U.S. does not have this responsibility, while 39% say it does. About a quarter of Americans (24%) say the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity contributes not too much or not at all to climate change. About a quarter of Americans (24%) oppose this. Larger shares of Republicans say human activity contributes some to climate change (39%) or that it contributes not too much or not at all (44%). Among moderate and conservative Democrats, by comparison, 37% support the U.S. phasing out fossil fuels completely, compared with 61% who prefer a mix of fossil fuels and renewables. In the GOP, for example, a third of conservative Republicans and GOP leaners favor the U.S. taking steps to become carbon neutral, while 64% oppose it. The vast majority of Democrats (90%) favor the U.S. taking steps to become carbon neutral by 2050. A large majority of Democrats say human activity contributes a great deal to climate change (71%), while just 17% of Republicans say the same. Three-quarters of Americans say that human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels, contributes to climate change at least some, with 46% saying it contributes a great deal, a separate January 2022 Center survey found. About four-in-ten U.S. adults (42%) say that dealing with climate change should be a top priority for President Joe Biden and Congress to address this year, according to a Center survey conducted in January 2022.