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Raging Waves Batter California’s Coast and Its Beloved Piers

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - December 26, 2024 - 11:02
An increasingly ferocious and volatile surf is raising questions about the future of the state’s piers, which have defined the coastline for generations.
Categories: Climate

Chemtrail conspiracy theories: why RFK Jr is watching the skies

The Guardian Climate Change - December 26, 2024 - 10:00

Belief in a supposed US government plot linked to aircraft condensation trails has been boosted by confusion over proposals to geoengineer a response to the climate crisis

A conspiracy theory that airplanes are leaving nefarious “chemtrails” in their wake due to a sinister government plot has been given fresh impetus in the US amid a swirl of concerns and confusion about proposals to geoengineer a response to the climate crisis.

State legislation to ban what some lawmakers call chemtrails has been pushed forward in Tennessee and, most recently, Florida. Meanwhile, Robert F Kennedy, who has expressed interest in the conspiracy theory on social media and his podcast, is set to be at the heart of Donald Trump’s new administration following his nomination as health secretary.

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Categories: Climate

The Secrets of the World’s Favorite Smell

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - December 26, 2024 - 05:01
Your holiday baking wouldn’t be the same without it.
Categories: Climate

They lived through the ice age. Can the mighty musk ox survive the heat?

The Guardian Climate Change - December 26, 2024 - 00:00

Rising temperatures are pushing these Arctic mammals ever farther into Greenland’s north. But eventually there will be nowhere left for them to go

Built like a small bison, weighing as much as a grand piano and covered in thick, shaggy coat, the musk ox is one of the most distinctive species in the high Arctic. But from a hill on Greenland’s tundra, they seem impossible to find.

Each bush, rock and clump of grass resembles a mass of wool and horns in the blustery chill on the edge of the island’s enormous polar ice cap. Scanning the shimmering landscape with binoculars, Chris Sørensen looks for signs of movement.

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Categories: Climate

Trump’s Plans to Scrap Climate Policies Has Unnerved Green Energy Investors

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - December 25, 2024 - 10:07
President-elect Donald J. Trump is expected to roll back many of the rules and subsidies that have attracted billions of dollars from the private sector to renewable energy and electric vehicles.
Categories: Climate

Researchers race to climate-proof Christmas tree production: ‘We’re up to the task’

The Guardian Climate Change - December 25, 2024 - 09:00

Scientists search for a variety to withstand the climate crisis as high temperatures and drought can stress trees

The climate crisis is increasingly affecting agriculture in the United States, including the production of Christmas trees.

Like all crops, Christmas trees are vulnerable to a changing climate, as the United States continues to experience warmer temperatures, more frequent and severe heat, increased rainfall, droughts, wildfires and hurricanes, as a result of global warming and the climate crisis – primarily driven by humans’ burning of fossil fuels.

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Categories: Climate

What I Learned Most From My Trip to China

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - December 24, 2024 - 17:05
America must compete with China, but there’s also a complicated reality that both countries have to face.
Categories: Climate

Average Briton causes 23 times more CO2 on Christmas Day, study reveals

The Guardian Climate Change - December 24, 2024 - 10:00

Campaigners say consumption such as travel, gifts and food are destroying planet and the meaning of Christmas

Whether out of poverty or virtue, many of us spend much of the year reining in our appetites to save our pennies and our health. But at Christmas many of us put our worries aside and go wild in an orgy of lavish gifting, extensive travel and a gluttonous feeding frenzy.

This carnival of consumption has a cost: not just to our wallets and our waistlines, but also to the climate.

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Categories: Climate

Single-use plastic will soon be banned in Nigeria – but is the country ready?

The Guardian Climate Change - December 24, 2024 - 09:00

With restrictions due next month, food vendors are still using such plastics and some traders have not heard of ban

Labake Ajiboye-Richard, the founder of a Lagos-based sustainability consultancy, was driving in Nigeria’s most populous city earlier this month when she saw someone throwing rubbish out of their car window.

“I was so shocked to see that in 2024,” she said. “If you’re throwing something on the road, what are you doing in your home? What are you doing in your community?”

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Categories: Climate

Trump quiere controlar Panamá y Groenlandia. Esta vez no es una broma

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - December 24, 2024 - 07:52
En los últimos días, el presidente electo ha pedido que se afirme el control estadounidense en el exterior, demostrando que su filosofía de “Estados Unidos primero” tiene una dimensión expansionista.
Categories: Climate

‘We need to be prepared’: China adapts to era of extreme flooding

The Guardian Climate Change - December 24, 2024 - 07:05

While some residents take to building houses in trees, officials recognise need for national response to climate disasters

Every summer, Dongting Hu, China’s second-largest freshwater lake, swells in size as flood water from the Yangtze River flows into its borders. Dams and dikes are erected around the lake’s edges to protect against flooding. But this year, not for the first time, they were overwhelmed.

For three days in early July, more than 800 rescue workers in Hunan province scrambled to block the breaches. One rupture alone took 100,000 cubic metres of rock to seal, according to Zhang Yingchun, a Hunan official. At least 7,000 people had to be evacuated. It was one of a series of disasters to hit China as the country grappled with a summer of extreme weather. By August, there had been 25 large floods, the biggest number since records began in 1998, reported state media.

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Categories: Climate

Trump’s Wish to Control Greenland and Panama Canal: Not a Joke This Time

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - December 23, 2024 - 18:20
In recent days the president-elect has called for asserting U.S. control over the Panama Canal and Greenland, showing that his “America First” philosophy has an expansionist dimension.
Categories: Climate

Climate Change Is Making Homeownership Even More Unaffordable

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - December 23, 2024 - 15:00
Extreme weather is creating a crisis in the home insurance market that has no easy solution.
Categories: Climate

Why Champagne Producers Are Using the Perpetual Reserve Method More Frequently

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - December 23, 2024 - 14:45
A new method of making nonvintage Champagnes is taking hold. Producers see it as a hedge against climate change while improving overall quality.
Categories: Climate

My sewing group makes reusable produce bags - cutting back on plastic and textile waste

The Guardian Climate Change - December 23, 2024 - 09:00
  • Read more from My DIY climate hack, a series on everyday people’s creative solutions to the climate crisis

Single-use plastic bags are not only wasteful, they cause serious damage to the environment and our health. Anne-Marie Bonneau, 56, is on a mission to put more reusable produce bags into the world. With the help of her sewing bee group, who make them from upcycled fabric, they’ve given more than 4,000 bags away.

As more cities and states implement plastic bag bans, Bonneau, who is known online as the Zero-Waste Chef, is helping people in California’s Silicon Valley make the move away from single-use plastic bags and spreading joy in the process.

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Categories: Climate

How to teach climate change so 15-year-olds can act

The Guardian Climate Change - December 23, 2024 - 09:00

OECD’s Pisa program will measure the ability of students to take action in response to climate anxiety and ‘take their position and role in the global world’

“It’s going to get hot and everything’s going to be on fire and the oceans will rise,” says a year 11 student, Josh Dorian. “That’s just like the worst of the worst. How do you combat that?

“Well, you fix it, you stop it from happening, you take preventive measures,” says Josh, who is studying VCE environmental science at Mount Lilydale Mercy College, a high school in Melbourne’s outer east. “Involving kids in that is scary but I think it’s necessary.”

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Categories: Climate

A Picturesque New England Town’s Debt to the Right Whale

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - December 22, 2024 - 07:38
We owe it to the right whale — and to so many other species — to reconstruct what our own history has taken from them.
Categories: Climate

Removing Carbon From the Sky Could Be the Next Climate Gold Rush

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - December 22, 2024 - 05:00
Investors are betting that they can make a dent in global warming, and healthy profits, with companies that alter the atmosphere.
Categories: Climate

Elderly activist to spend Christmas in prison because tag does not fit

The Guardian Climate Change - December 21, 2024 - 08:04

Woman jailed for M25 protest not allowed to continue home detention because electronic tags are too big

A 77-year-old environmental activist will spend Christmas in prison despite having been released on an electronic tag, because the authorities cannot find an electronic device small enough to fit her wrists.

Gaie Delap, a retired teacher and a Quaker from Bristol, was jailed in August, along with four co-defendants, for her part in a campaign of disruptive Just Stop Oil protests on the M25 in November 2022.

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Categories: Climate

The World Is Falling Apart. Should I Scrap My Plans to Have Kids?

NYT Global Warming Climate Change - December 20, 2024 - 15:00
The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on family planning in uncertain times.
Categories: Climate