🌱Climate Change🌡⛈

A very long essay, but I think worth a read - for solarpunks especially - even if you end up disagreeing with the anti-growth and anti-renewables conclusion.

They found that New England has heated up by 2.5C (4.5F) on average from 1900 to 2024. This is far in excess of the global average, with the world warming by around 1.3C in this time due to the release of heat-trapping gases from the burning of fossil fuels. “That is very fast, which is worrying,” said Young.

For decades, corn has reigned over American agriculture. It sprawls across 90m acres – about the size of Montana – and goes into everything from livestock feed and processed foods to the ethanol blended into most of the nation’s gasoline.

Scientists have long known that fires release substantial amounts of greenhouse gases and pollutants into the atmosphere.

The attendees were told that we as a society must put an immediate end to fossil fuels

As the American West warms due to climate change, wildfires are increasingly burning in higher-elevation mountains, charring the watersheds where the region’s vital snowpack accumulates.

Extreme weather kills more than 1,100 people across south and south-east Asia as cyclones turbocharge rain systems

Tensions grow after research in England finds there may not be enough water for planned carbon capture and hydrogen projects

A court heard the oil giant failed to properly maintain pipework on Brent Charlie for seven years

Using advanced satellite data and machine learning, the researchers tracked more than a decade of changes in aboveground forest biomass, the amount of carbon stored in trees and woody vegetation. They found that while Africa gained carbon between 2007 and 2010, widespread forest loss in tropical rainforests has since tipped the balance.

The Coalition’s tortuous decision to abandon the climate target was built on a big lie, that the recent increases in power prices are the result of the transition to renewables – even though wholesale electricity prices have been falling.

German scientists warn global warming is accelerating faster than expected, raising the risk of a 3 °C rise by 2050 and forcing Europe to confront unthinkable adaptation plans.

Mountains share many characteristics with Arctic regions and are experiencing similarly rapid changes,(…) both environments are losing snow and ice rapidly and are seeing profound changes in ecosystems.

The European Commission’s Enjoy, it’s from Europe programme has spent €1.5bn since 2017 on campaigns and events to “raise awareness of the efforts made by European farmers to produce quality products”, which frequently overstates the environmental benefits of eating meat and dairy.

Migrant workers return from Gulf countries with failed kidneys, victims of extreme temperatures, grueling labor, and a global system that leaves them unprotected.

The Amazon is often treated as a single forest, yet the risks its people face from extreme weather vary sharply across borders. A new analysis by researchers from Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia and the United States suggests those risks are also widely undercounted. The team compiled more than 12,500 reports of storms, floods, landslides, droughts and wildfires between 2013 and 2023, covering five countries. Even with major gaps, the picture is grim. In a single year, more than 3 million people were affected and more than 100,000 pieces of public infrastructure damaged.

It’s a climate-vulnerable nation, while also being the world’s sixth-largest greenhouse-gas emitter. Global investment in climate action is vital

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Delegates made minimal headway on timetable for replacing oil and gas or on firm commitments to reducing carbon emissions

Throughout COP30, the scientific community had repeatedly and clearly emphasized the threat posed by a failure to act. Though the process did secure more scrutiny of fossil fuel producers, some money for forests and adaptation, and a new emphasis on trade and implementation, it only inched towards working through the collective phase out of oil, gas and coal. By its end, COP30 in Belém failed to secure any new agreement on ending the fossil fuel age, forcing the world to wait yet another year to see if global leaders will ever make good on their Paris promises.

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What was once considered a climate holy grail comes with serious tradeoffs. The world wants more of it anyway.

Tehran is running out of water.

Wealthy countries should triple funds for countries to tackle climate impacts, but deforestation and critical minerals blocked from final deal

Abstract. 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). 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.

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To many people, Brazil conjures up images of the endless Amazon River, lush tropical rainforest and breathtaking wildlife. In a country of its size, this picture can remain true while also containing a more complex and changing set of realities. For example, climate change, high water demand and human activity are also leading to increased desert-like conditions. One recent study found that in the past 30 years, there has been a 30% expansion in dryland habitat across Brazil. One of the most affected areas includes the state of Pará, a major part of the Amazon rainforest and home to Belém, which is hosting this year’s UN climate summit.

Consider your morning cup of coffee. Your kettle’s heating element — or flame on a stove — warms up water that you infuse with beans and pour into a mug. Maybe you get busy and the cup of joe sits there for a while, releasing its heat into the atmosphere of the room, until it reaches equilibrium with the indoor temperature. In other words: It got cold.

Experts say 2023, 2024 and 2025 the three hottest years in 176 years of records, with 1.5C Paris agreement target now ‘virtually impossible’

Last year Brazil saw its biggest drop in emissions since 2009, new data show. The decline comes in the wake of a crackdown on deforestation.

As the end of 2025 approaches, regular folk take stock of the past year, and maybe ponder their New Year’s resolutions. Climate scientists, on the other hand, have been busy parsing mountains of data from the last 10 months, ranging from global temperatures to measurements of polar ice to the costs of extreme weather. Accordingly, their goal for 2026 might be to somehow make world leaders understand that humanity is running out of time to avert catastrophe.

Food and farming companies will claim agriculture is the solution to the climate crisis at the Brazil summit — even though food drives a third of global warming.

In a significant breakthrough for conservation and climate policy, a new resolution passed yesterday at the IUCN World Conservation Congress has formally recognised the role of wild animals as critical enablers of natural solutions to climate change.

Diplomats preparing for COP30 in the Brazilian city of Belém next month have been discussing an emerging issue that could feature for the first time at a UN climate summit: the global rush for energy transition minerals.

El pasado lunes (20 [de octubre 2025]), el Instituto Brasileño de Medio Ambiente (Ibama) otorgó un permiso ambiental a la empresa petrolera brasileña, Petrobras, para iniciar perforaciones en fase de exploración de petróleo en la cuenca sedimentaria de la desembocadura del río Amazonas, que se extiende desde el estado de Amapá hasta Río Grande del Norte. Los órganos ambientales del Estado justifican que estás operaciones se realizarán a una distancia de 500 kilómetros del gran caudal. Dos días después de aprobar esta licencia, se pidió ajustar los permisos para autorizar otros tres pozos que no estaban contemplados.

Note that climate models have a history of underestimating the cooling effect of aerosol pollution:

I have made a quick-and-dirty edit of the original image in order to update the numbers to the latest available, which account for the corrected cooling effect of aerosol pollution described in Hansen et al 2025, as well as other recent findings. I got the updated numbers from this book, also by Climate Healers (specifically chapter 17, page 98 of the book or page 114 of the PDF file).

Estados Unidos se encuentra en medio de una grave crisis de vivienda que afecta más agudamente a las familias de bajos ingresos. A la misma vez, la crisis climática aumenta la frecuencia y ferocidad del calor extremo, lo cual empeorará en el futuro a medida que sigan en aumento las emisiones de carbono que atrapan el calor en la atmósfera.

The largest herds of caribou in the world make their homes here. Polar bears give birth to cubs in dens dug into this soil, some of them more than 200 years old. And birds like the Arctic tern fly north every summer, some from as far south as Antarctica, to breed and lay their eggs.

Ahead of the United Nations climate talks in Brazil, advocacy groups are pushing for companies and governments to set meaningful emissions targets to lower emissions from livestock.

Abstract

Two weeks before Brazil hosts the COP30 summit in the Amazon city of Belém, its state-run oil firm Petrobras has been granted a licence to explore for oil in an offshore block in the mouth of the Amazon River, a move criticised by campaigners as undermining the country’s climate leadership.

Abstract

Greenhouse gases from wildfires at sixth highest level on record after blazes in large areas of the Americas and Africa

A draft report commissioned by the Trump administration’s Department of Energy, or DOE, misleadingly claims that increasing levels of carbon dioxide could be beneficial for agriculture. In fact, mainstream climate experts have found that rising CO2 levels, by causing climate change, are harmful to agriculture overall – and likely to cause food prices to increase.

Many companies seem to be walking back climate pledges. The sad fate of the Net Zero Banking Alliance is a case in point. But if you peek behind the curtains of this seeming defeat, you’ll find a weird, counter-intuitive phenomenon that seems to be on the rise: many companies are actually continuing or even accelerating their climate goals, while also quietly scrubbing their public acknowledgement of them. In fact, in 2024, the consulting firm South Pole found that in some sectors across the world, the majority of surveyed companies are now intentionally talking less and less about their climate goals. 

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Most people probably think that the rainforest of central and west Africa, the second largest in the world, has been around for millions of years. However recent research suggests that it is mostly just 2,000 or so years old. The forest reached roughly its modern state following five centuries of regeneration after it was massively fragmented when the dry season suddenly became longer some 2,500 years ago.

“Extreme” wildfires emitted more than 8bn tonnes of carbon dioxide during the 2024-25 “global fire season”, according to a new report.

Could the boreal forest be less fragile than we think? Contrary to the predictions of models that forecast its rapid decline in favour of temperate maple forests, the ecological history of the boreal forest is showing surprising resilience.

Temperatures across Europe are rising at twice the global average. This alarming trend is leading to more frequent and intense heatwaves, droughts, floods and storms.

Unless global heating is reduced to 1.2C ‘as fast as possible’, warm water coral reefs will not remain ‘at any meaningful scale’, a report by 160 scientists from 23 countries warns

Scientists say that warming has breached a critical threshold for tropical coral reefs, which are expected to see catastrophic losses in the years ahead. They warn that if warming continues unchecked, the world will cross other climate “tipping points,” destabilizing ice sheets, disrupting ocean currents, and causing irreversible damage to the Amazon rainforest.

Mary Lawlor, UN special rapporteur for human rights defenders, accuses US, UK and other governments of paying lip service to climate goals while criminalizing activists

The government has announced “science-based” biogenic methane targets for 2050, which it says will provide exporters with a clear pathway to reduce emissions while maintaining productivity and trade competitiveness.

On Sept. 23, the city of Kolkata in eastern India came to a standstill: The capital of West Bengal state received more than 12% of the city’s average annual rainfall in just 24 hours, some 247.5 millimeters (9.7 inches). The subsequent flooding claimed lives and caused extensive property damage.

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NZ$180bn worth of housing and $26bn of infrastructure at risk of flooding and storm damage, new government report finds

In 2024, the Amazon Rainforest underwent its most devastating forest fire season in more than two decades. According to a new study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the fire-driven forest degradation released an estimated 791 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2024, a sevenfold increase compared with the previous two years.

The first-ever international conference on the contentious topic of “overshoot” was held last week in a palace in the small town of Laxenburg in Austria.

Two years ago, Ecuador surprised the world with a historic referendum: more than 58% of the population voted to keep nearly one billion barrels of crude oil underground in Yasuní National Park – one of the most biodiverse places on Earth and home to Indigenous Peoples living in voluntary isolation (Tagaeri and Taromenane). The referendum was a triumph of democracy and a global example of how a society can choose to protect life over oil.

Scientists find 10% chance that similar events to the ‘unheard of’ temperatures in 2023 could occur each year

The planet would be a whole lot hotter if it weren’t for fecal pellets. Across the world’s oceans, tiny organisms known as phytoplankton harvest the sun’s energy, gobbling up carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. They’re eaten by little animals called zooplankton, which poop out pellets that sink to the seafloor. What is essentially a giant toilet, then, flushes carbon at the surface into the depths, where it stays locked away from the atmosphere, thus keeping the amount of CO2 up there in check.

An unexpected region of the Amazon is at the forefront of rapid growth in climate extremes, a new report reveals.

The UK’s Climate Change Act is a landmark piece of legislation that guides the nation’s response to global warming and has proved highly influential around the world.

The researchers said the worst problems were with issuing additional credits for “non-additional” projects, such as building a windfarm that would have gone up anyway; impermanent projects, such as planting trees that later burn down in a wildfire; projects with leakage, such as protecting part of a forest but effectively pushing loggers elsewhere; and double-counted projects, such as restoring a peatland but letting the seller and buyer claim the drop in emissions.

Kevin Miller can get a person to the brink of heat stroke in 30 minutes.

There is no denying that climate change is progressing unchecked and accelerating. In 2023 and 2024, global average temperatures were +1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. It is even possible that the 1.5-degree limit of global warming adopted in Paris may already be permanently exceeded.

Of 200 fires in the past 44 years, half of the fires that cost US$1bn or more were in the last decade

A controversial way of measuring how much methane warms the planet has stirred debate in recent years – particularly around assessing the climate impact of livestock farming.

A global shift towards “healthier” diets could cut non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane, from agriculture by 15% by 2050, according to a new report.

Manuel Pulgar-Vidal is WWF’s Global Climate and Energy Lead and a former Peruvian environment minister and President of COP20 in Lima in 2014

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We won’t get real climate action while big polluters are overseeing government departments.

A decade of organizing has turned trash-strewn lots into edible parks. Now Boston is expanding food forests as part of its climate action plan.

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The Northeast Pacific ocean, off the U.S. West Coast, is experiencing its fourth-largest marine heat wave since record-keeping began in 1982.

When the 2015 Paris Agreement was inked nearly a decade ago, it marked a consensus, agreed to by nearly all the countries in the world, that global temperature rise should be limited to well below 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels. But the treaty hinges on those almost 200 countries periodically submitting goals outlining just how much they’ll individually cut emissions in the coming years, and then following through. Although the Paris Agreement didn’t stipulate a formal accountability mechanism, these plans — called Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, and submitted every five years — were envisioned as catalysts that would signal national priorities, guide policy, and match the ambition required by the rapidly approaching 2-degree target.

A major new scientific review, “Planetary Health Check 2025”, shows that seven of nine planetary boundaries have now been exceeded. For the first time, this also includes the boundary for ocean acidification. This means that several of Earth’s life-supporting systems risk crossing critical thresholds, with severe consequences for both ecosystems and societies.