Articles

The Prairieland case is about more than eight defendants. It is about the dangerous precedent being built around protest, political identity, and dissent.

The British-Canadian computer scientist often touted as a “godfather” of artificial intelligence has shortened the odds of AI wiping out humanity over the next three decades, warning the pace of change in the technology is “much faster” than expected. Prof Geoffrey Hinton, who this year was awarded the Nobel prize in physics for his work in AI, said there was a “10% to 20%” chance that AI would lead to human extinction within the next three decades.

Global effort needed to limit effects of pollution, industrial fishing and climate crisis, World Ocean Assessment says

There is mounting experimental evidence that lifetime exposure to increasing atmospheric CO2 levels can negatively impact the normal physiology of organisms. Directly assessing this in humans is very difficult. We analysed serum bicarbonate (HCO3−), calcium (Ca) and phosphorus (P) from 1999 to 2020 as indirect proxies for atmospheric CO2 exposure. Over this period, average bicarbonate levels in this population show an increasing trend which parallels rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Both. If these trends continue, blood bicarbonate values could be at the limit of the accepted healthy range in half a century, and Ca and P will be at the limit of their healthy ranges by the end of this century. This has the potential to cause a range of adverse health effects.

The world seems headed into another El Nino, just 3 years after the last one. Such quick return normally would imply, at most, an El Nino of moderate strength, but we suggest that even a moderately strong El Nino may yield record global temperature already in 2026 and still greater temperature in 2027. The extreme warming will be a result mainly of high climate sensitivity and a recent increase of the net global climate forcing, not the result of an exceptional El Nino, per se. We find that the principal drive for global warming acceleration began in about 2015, which implies that 2°C global warming is likely to be reached in the 2030s, not at midcentury.

Around 56 million years ago, Earth suddenly got much hotter. Over about 5,000 years, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere drastically increased and global temperatures shot up by some 6°C.

The growth rate of greenhouse gas (GHG) climate forcing increased rapidly in the last 15 years to about 0.5 W/m2 per decade, as shown by the “colorful chart” for GHG climate forcing that we have been publishing for 25 years (Fig. 1).[1] The chart is not in IPCC reports, perhaps because it reveals inconvenient facts. Although growth of GHG climate forcing declined rapidly after the 1987 Montreal Protocol, other opportunities to decrease climate forcing were missed. If policymakers do not appreciate the significance of present data on changing climate forcings, we scientists must share the blame.

A climate-focused report out of Europe throws serious shade at plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) cars, pointing out that they emit nearly as much carbon dioxide emissions as combustion engine-powered vehicles. In fact, it highlights how real-world emissions from supposedly greener PHEVs has increased over the years above officially recorded figures to nearly five times. Yikes! The findings come from the European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E), a clutch of non-government organizations focused on sustainable transport policy across the continent. The report has been published ahead of a review of automotive CO2 emission standards, which would see Europe continue to sell plug-in hybrid electric vehicles beyond 2035, when they're set to be phased out in order to meet EU climate targets.

Collapse has historically benefited the 99%. […] That’s the amazing conclusion of Luke Kemp, author of Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.  Luke is a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, and has spent the past five years studying the collapse of civilisations throughout history. He joins me to explain his research, detailing the difference between complex, collective civilisations and what he calls “Goliaths”, massive centralising forces by which a small group of individuals extract wealth from the rest through domination and the threat of violence. Today, he says, we live in a global Goliath.

The Production Gap Report finds that 10 years after the Paris Agreement, governments plan to produce more than double the volume of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, steering the world further from the Paris goals than the last such assessment in 2023.

Several, more recent global warming projections in the coupled model intercomparison project 6 contain extensions beyond year 2100–2300/2500. The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) in these projections shows transitions to extremely weak overturning below the surface mixed layer (<6 Sv; 1 Sv = 106 m3 s−1) in all models forced by a high-emission (SSP585) scenario and sometimes also forced by an intermediate- (SSP245) and low-emission (SSP126) scenario. These extremely weak overturning states are characterised by a shallow maximum overturning at depths less than 200 m and a shutdown of the circulation associated with North Atlantic deep water formation. Northward Atlantic heat transport at 26°N decreases to 20%–40% of the current observed value. Heat release to the atmosphere north of 45°N weakens to less than 20% of its present-day value and in some models completely vanishes, leading to strong cooling in the subpolar North Atlantic and Northwest Europe. In all cases, these transitions to a

Donald Trump n’attend pas 2028 pour poser les jalons de son avenir politique. Officiellement, la Constitution américaine l’empêche de briguer un troisième mandat présidentiel. Officieusement, le milliardaire multiplie les signaux contradictoires, brandissant des casquettes « quatre ans de plus » devant Volodymyr Zelensky et ses homologues étrangers, laissant planer le doute sur ses intentions, tout en orchestrant une vaste opération de remodelage électoral destinée à assurer aux Républicains une majorité durable au Congrès.

An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

Writer says for many years he has refused to use word but now must ‘with immense pain and with a broken heart’

Bad climate news is everywhere. Africa is being hit particularly hard by climate change and extreme weather, impacting lives and livelihoods. We are living in a world that is warming at the fastest rate since records began. Yet, governments have been slow to act.

Anthropogenic activities are increasing the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. There is mounting experimental evidence that lifetime exposure to these increasing atmospheric CO2 levels can negatively impact the normal physiology of organisms. However, directly assessing this in humans is very difficult. We analysed serum bicarbonate (HCO3−), calcium (Ca) and phosphorus (P) levels from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 1999 to 2020 as indirect proxies for atmospheric CO2 exposure. Over this period, average bicarbonate levels in this population show an increasing trend which parallels rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Both Ca and Phave decreased steadily over the same period. If these trends continue, blood bicarbonate values could be at the limit of the accepted healthy range in half a century, and Ca and P will be at the limit of their healthy ranges by the end of this century. Studies indicate that, after this time, elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide

Planet Earth is living on borrowed time, a new global report reveals. The world must stop burning fossil fuels now and take urgent steps to reduce global warming.

Despite working on polar science for the British Antarctic Survey for 20 years, Louise Sime finds the magnitude of potential sea-level rise hard to comprehend

Real world measurements of how much extra heat the Earth is trapping are well beyond most climate models. That’s a real problem.

Since Donald Trump's presidential election victory, major tech companies have abandoned years of policies restricting military work and sought out lucrative defense contracts and deeper connections with the Pentagon.

Breaching threshold would ramp up catastrophic weather events, further increasing human suffering

I am writing this message to the millions of people who have been involved in the climate movement over the past several years. This movement has been an incredible force, thanks to your courage, passion and commitment. It has created a new public consciousness and a powerful sense of popular will. These are major achievements. And yet it is clear that we have now reached an impasse and a new path is needed.

Fifteen years ago, smack in the middle of Barack Obama's first term, amid the rapid rise of social media and a slow recovery from the Great Recession, a professor at the University of Connecticut issued a stark warning: the United States was heading into a decade of growing political instability.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet could reach its tipping point with only minimal additional ocean warming – with long-term consequences for global sea levels. But a small window of time remains to take countermeasures.

A new study uncovers Earth’s deep temperature history and shows just how tightly carbon dioxide has always controlled the climate

Russia’s war in Ukraine has encouraged a rapid increase in the deployment of drones that use fibre optic cables to protect them from being jammed or downed by electronic warfare: the drones trail kilometres of plastic cable across frontlines. In this post Leon Moreland explores the environmental risks posed by this new form of battlefield plastic pollution.

Earth’s albedo (reflectivity) declined over the 25 years of precise satellite data, with the decline so large that this change must be mainly reduced reflection of sunlight by clouds. Part of the cloud change is caused by reduction of human-made atmospheric aerosols, which act as condensation nuclei for cloud formation, but most of the cloud change is cloud feedback that occurs with global warming. The observed albedo change proves that clouds provide a large, amplifying, climate feedback. This large cloud feedback confirms high climate sensitivity, consistent with paleoclimate data and with the rate of global warming in the past century.

2024 marks the first time since record keeping began that all of the 10 hottest years have fallen within the most recent decade.

The world is warming despite natural fluctuations from the El Niño cycle.

An updated threat assessment warns of the consequences of a divided NATO and an absent U.S.

Understanding how global mean surface temperature (GMST) has varied over the past half-billion years, a time in which evolutionary patterns of flora and fauna have had such an important influence on the evolution of climate, is essential for understanding the processes driving climate over that interval. Judd et al. present a record of GMST over the past 485 million years that they constructed by combining proxy data with climate modeling (see the Perspective by Mills). They found that GMST varied over a range from 11° to 36°C, with an “apparent” climate sensitivity of ∼8°C, about two to three times what it is today. —Jesse Smith

Scientists now fear that there is little more than five years left to prevent irreversible climate damage and stark changes to the Earth’s weather patterns from global carbon emissions, Minister for Climate Eamon Ryan has warned.

New research shows the company’s scientists were as “skillful” as independent experts in predicting how the burning of fossil fuels would warm the planet and bring about climate change.

An international team of scientists painstakingly gathered data from more than 50 years of seagoing scientific drilling missions to conduct a first-of-its-kind study of organic carbon that falls to the bottom of the ocean and gets drawn deep inside the planet.

New analysis says that particulate pollution is the greatest threat to human health in India.

Urgenda has become synonymous with a particular kind of lawsuit brought against a state for inaction on climate change. What impact it has had both in the Netherlands and internationally?

There is a 50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level for at least one of the next five years – and the likelihood is increasing with time, according to a new climate update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Climate change is raising flood risks in neighborhoods across the U.S. much faster than many people realize. Over the next three decades, the cost of flood damage is on pace to rise 26% due to climate change alone, an analysis of our new flood risk maps shows.

The loss of its buttressing ice shelf could hasten the demise of the “Doomsday Glacier”

Study finds natural regrowth yields better results than human plantings and offers hope for climate recovery

Scientists have uncovered a fascinating new insight into what caused one of the most rapid and dramatic instances of climate change in the history of the Earth.

Increase means country will slip back from goal of cutting emissions by 40% from 1990 levels

Global greenhouse gas emissions must peak in the next four years, coal and gas-fired power plants must close in the next decade and lifestyle and behavioural changes will be needed to avoid climate breakdown, according to the leaked draft of a report from the world’s leading authority on climate science.

In the archive of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology there is a typed note from the 1960s that planted the seed of an idea.

The effects of ‘weird weather’ were already being felt in the 1960s, but scientists linking fossil fuels with climate change were dismissed as prophets of doom

Throughout Earth's history, CO2 is thought to have exerted a fundamental control on environmental change. Here we review and revise CO2 reconstructions from boron isotopes in carbonates and carbon isotopes in organic matter over the Cenozoic—the past 66 million years. We find close coupling between CO2 and climate throughout the Cenozoic, with peak CO2 levels of ∼1,500 ppm in the Eocene greenhouse, decreasing to ∼500 ppm in the Miocene, and falling further into the ice age world of the Plio–Pleistocene. Around two-thirds of Cenozoic CO2 drawdown is explained by an increase in the ratio of ocean alkalinity to dissolved inorganic carbon, likely linked to a change in the balance of weathering to outgassing, with the remaining one-third due to changing ocean temperature and major ion composition. Earth system climate sensitivity is explored and may vary between different time intervals. The Cenozoic CO2 record highlights the truly geological scale of anthropogenic CO2 change: Current CO2 levels were last seen ar

There is about a 40% chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level in at least one of the next five years – and these odds are increasing with time, according to a new climate update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). There is a 90% likelihood of at least one year between 2021-2025 becoming the warmest on record, which would dislodge 2016 from the top ranking, according to the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, produced by the United Kingdom’s Met Office, the WMO lead centre for such predictions.

To understand how long it will take to recover from this extinction event, a team of European scientists from Germany, Switzerland, the UK and The Netherlands decided to compare it with the previous mass extinction event, which occurred 66 million years ago when an asteroid hit our planet. This was a major event event that wiped off dinosaurs along with 75% of all species.

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The latest report from the Climate Council of Australia, Aim High, Go Fast: Why Emissions Need to Plummet This Decade, lays out the science behind the necessity of urgent near-term climate action. The diagnosis is in, now the treatment must be ramped up with a greater sense of urgency than ever before, and we have to do it in the next 10 years.

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How much oil is left and how many years before we run out of the stuff? The recurring question everyone asks.

A new analysis shows the world's oceans were the warmest in 2019 than any other time in recorded human history, especially between the surface and a depth of 2,000 meters. The study, conducted by an international team of 14 scientists from 11 institutes across the world, also concludes that the past 10 years have been the warmest on record for global ocean temperatures, with the past five years holding the highest record.

Scientists just completed one of the most comprehensive investigations of Earth’s climate history—and the findings aren’t favorable. They found that the planet could eventually warm to levels it hasn’t reached in at least 34 million years.

Emily Stochl is a writer with a focus on the climate crisis, the second-hand fashion industry, ethical labor practices and sustainability. She is a climate activist with the grassroots organization, Sunrise Movement. She is also the host and creator of Pre-Loved Podcast.

Only 17.4 per cent of 2019’s e-waste was collected and recycled. This means that gold, silver, copper, platinum, and other high-value, recoverable materials conservatively valued at US $57 billion — a sum greater than the Gross Domestic Product of most countries — were mostly dumped or burned rather than being collected for treatment and reuse.

According to a new U.S. Army report, Americans could face a horrifically grim future from climate change involving blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war. The study found that the US military itself might also collapse. This could all happen over the next two decades, the report notes.

phosphorus is biologically vital. Supplies of phosphate rock – the only major phosphorus ore – are limited. So much so that phosphorus has been listed among the “endangered elements” where there is a risk to future supply. The problem is that the phosphorus used as fertiliser ends up dissolved in rivers and oceans as soluble phosphate, eventually becoming sediment. Currently there is no economically viable way of recovering it,

According to a new study from the Aarhus University in Denmark, humans will continue to wipe out mammalian species for the next 50 years, so much so that Earth will need three to five million years to recover its evolutionary diversity.

Humans will cause so many mammal species to go extinct in the next 50 years that the planet's evolutionary diversity won't recover for 3 to 5 million years, a team of researchers has found.

In 1968, the best-seller “The Population Bomb,” written by Paul and Anne Ehrlich warned of the perils of overpopulation: mass starvation, societal upheaval, environmental deterioration. The book was criticized at the time for painting an overly dark picture of the future. But while not all of the Ehrlich’s dire predictions have come to pass, the world’s population has doubled since then, to over seven billion, straining the planet’s resources and heating up our climate.

Here are the real reasons we’re not building clean energy anywhere near fast enough.

Well, cacao plants seem to be increasingly victims of fungal disease and climate change. Climate change may increase coastal flooding, worsen wildfires and hurricanes, foster the spread of insect-borne diseases, destroy coral reefs, threaten hundreds of animal species, and erode our current way of life, but jeopardize chocolate? .....

Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world's top soil could be gone within 60 years, a senior UN official said

The climate science maverick believes catastrophe is inevitable, carbon offsetting is a joke and ethical living a scam. So what would he do?