By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism
Can the global climate be stabilized before runaway change creates conditions that are too hot for human civilization and deadly for most species?
By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams
As temperatures bust heat records across the globe and wildfires rage from California to the Arctic, a new report produced annually by more than 500 scientists worldwide found that last year, the carbon dioxide concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere reached the highest levels "in the modern atmospheric measurement record and in ice core records dating back as far as 800,000 years."
By Samuel Miller McDonald, Activist Lab
You and I are witnessing the twenty-first century’s great crime: a global holocaust whose first victims have already perished. Fossil energy economies are doing this. They transform the world into a deathly, suffocating hothouse sabotaging the climate and atmosphere. That’s what they do.
By Daisy Dunne, Carbon Brief
From heatwave deaths in Japan, Algeria and Canada, to wildfires in Sweden, Greece and California, the extended spells of hot, dry weather have become frontpage news around the world. Carbon Brief looks back at how the media has reported the extreme weather and how the coverage has – or has not – referenced climate change.
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
A leaked U.N. climate change report warns that the Earth's climate could endanger economic growth in the decades ahead. I think the problem is the other way around.
By Martin Bush, DeSmog Blog
Several major economies, including the U.S. and Canada, rely heavily on fossil fuel production and exports. But the surging market penetration of renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency improvements, and climate emission policies are certain to substantially reduce the global demand for fossil fuels.
By Eric Holthaus, Grist
The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were this high, millions of years ago, the planet was very different. For one, humans didn’t exist. On Wednesday, scientists at the University of California in San Diego confirmed that April’s monthly average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration breached 410 parts per million for the first time in our history.
By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism
What the Keeling Curve shows, then, are two separate but connected rifts in Earth’s metabolism. First, an increase in total CO2 that breaks with at least 800,000 years of history. Second, increased CO2 is changing the way that plants absorb and emit CO2, and that in turn is altering a seasonal cycle that has likely been unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.
By Helen Berry, Carbon Brief
Overall, the consensus in the scientific literature is that climate change will increase the number of people exposed to extreme events and, therefore, to subsequent psychological problems, such as worry, anxiety, depression, distress, loss, grief, trauma and even suicide.
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
How easy is it to tell the difference between so-called "fake news" and real news? Could algorithms designed to do that exclude important stories about climate and environment?