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'I want to go home': passengers stranded by Dubai extreme floods – video
Passengers crowded around airline desks at Dubai international airport on Wednesday after major delays and cancellations caused by heavy rains.
The United Arab Emirates was hit by what the government described as the highest rainfall in the past 75 years. The rains began on Monday night, and by Tuesday evening the desert city of Dubai had received the average amount of rain it normally gets in a year.
Although the heavy rains had eased by late Tuesday, disruption was continuing on Wednesday, with Emirates airline suspending check-in for passengers departing from Dubai until midnight
Continue reading...Climate crisis: average world incomes to drop by nearly a fifth by 2050
Cost of environmental damage will be six times higher than price of limiting global heating to 2C, study finds
Average incomes will fall by almost a fifth within the next 26 years as a result of the climate crisis, according to a study that predicts the costs of damage will be six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C.
Rising temperatures, heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense extreme weather are projected to cause $38tn (£30tn) of destruction each year by mid-century, according to the research, which is the most comprehensive analysis of its type ever undertaken, and whose findings are published in the journal Nature.
Continue reading...Funding Australia’s renewable transition isn’t ‘picking winners’ – it’s securing our future | Greg Jericho
Government support for green manufacturing is actually the easy part. To truly reduce emissions, we must stop digging up and burning fossil fuels
Last week Anthony Albanese finally announced the government’s major plan for the transition to a renewable energy economy. The Future Made in Australia plan was quickly derided by critics as “picking winners”, in the misguided view that the market is better at deciding how to tackle climate change and that the market is in any way free or lacking distortions.
It’s an article of faith among many economists and commentators that governments should not try to “pick winners”, despite the fact that Australia has a long and glorious tradition of doing so.
Continue reading...Gene editing crops to be colourful could aid weeding, say scientists
Creating visually distinctive plants likely to become important as more weed-like crops are grown for food
Genetically engineering crops to be colourful could help farmers produce food without pesticides, as it would make it easier to spot weeds, scientists have said.
This will be increasingly important as hardy, climate-resistant “weeds” are grown for food in the future, the authors have written in their report published in the journal Trends in Plant Science.
Continue reading...What the desert city of Dubai looks like after its biggest rainfall in 75 years – video
Cars submerged in raging flood waters, planes on flooded runways and ankle-deep water at a metro station – this is what the United Arab Emirates and its desert city of Dubai look after a deluge. Dubai received about as much rain in 24 hours as it usually does in a year
Continue reading...‘We need more shade’: US’s hottest city turns to trees to cool those most in need
Phoenix broke several heat records last year. Now Grant Park, which has inequitable tree cover, is seeing a tree-planting drive that promises some respite from 100F temperatures
It was a relatively cool spring day in Phoenix, Arizona, as a tree-planting crew dug large holes in one of the desert city’s hottest and least shaded neighborhoods.
Still, it was sweaty backbreaking work as they carefully positioned, watered and staked a 10ft tall Blue palo verde and Chilean mesquite in opposite corners of resident Ana Cordoba’s dusty unshaded backyard.
Continue reading...Billions more in overseas aid needed to avert climate disaster, say economists
Pressure piles on World Bank and IMF to steer countries to low-carbon transition at spring summit
Governments of wealthy countries must pledge hundreds of billions more in overseas aid payments channelled through the World Bank to avert the worst effects of the climate crisis, civil society experts and economists have said.
The International Development Association fund, the arm of the World Bank that disburses loans and grants to poor countries, is worth about $93bn (£b75n) but that figure must be roughly tripled by 2030, according to economic experts.
Continue reading...Queensland state LNP backs Labor’s emission cuts of 75% by 2035 drawing ire from federal colleagues
‘We must do all we can to become more sustainable’, says shadow environment minister
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Queensland’s Liberal National party has backed one of the most ambitious emission reduction targets in Australia – much to the disappointment of some of their federal counterparts.
While the federal opposition is still yet to unveil mid-term climate targets as part of its net zero by 2050 promise, the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, has decisively ruled out joining his state counterparts in their ambitious pledge.
Continue reading...What Can ‘Green Islam’ Achieve in Indonesia?
Interior Department Rejects Ambler Road Project in Alaska
Albanese’s promised clean economy act has been a long time coming but it’s the right place to start | Adam Morton
The challenge for a resource-rich, medium-sized economy such as Australia is to identify the right green industries to focus on, while minimising the risks to taxpayers
It’s taken a while to get here but Anthony Albanese is on the verge of promising what some economists and most clean energy advocates have been urging Australian governments to do for years. Or at least a version of it.
The prime minister’s promised “Future Made in Australia” act is clumsily named, and the announcement last week had few details, but the idea – that the government will need to use its weight to help develop green industries if the country is to make a rapid transition from fossil fuels to a clean economy – has been a long time coming.
Continue reading...No birdsong, no water in the creek, no beating wings: how a haven for nature fell silent
As the soundscape of the natural world began to disappear over 30 years, one man was listening and recording it all
Read more: World faces ‘deathly silence’ of nature as wildlife disappears, warn experts
The tale starts 30 years ago, when Bernie Krause made his first audio clip in Sugarloaf Ridge state park, 20 minutes’ drive from his house near San Francisco. He chose a spot near an old bigleaf maple. Many people loved this place: there was a creek and a scattering of picnic benches nearby.
As a soundscape recordist, Krause had travelled around the world listening to the planet. But in 1993 he turned his attention to what was happening on his doorstep. In his first recording, a stream of chortles, peeps and squeaks erupt from the animals that lived in the rich, scrubby habitat. His sensitive microphones captured the sounds of the creek, creatures rustling through undergrowth, and the songs of the spotted towhee, orange-crowned warbler, house wren and mourning dove.
Continue reading...UK facing food shortages and price rises after extreme weather
Heavy rain likely to cause low yields in Britain and other parts of Europe, with drought in Morocco hitting imports
The UK faces food shortages and price rises as extreme weather linked to climate breakdown causes low yields on farms locally and abroad.
Record rainfall has meant farmers in many parts of the UK have been unable to plant crops such as potatoes, wheat and vegetables during the key spring season. Crops that have been planted are of poor quality, with some rotting in the ground.
Continue reading...Which UK foods are at risk as extreme weather causes havoc with global supplies?
Many products consumed by Britons could be hit by floods and droughts driven by climate crisis
From floods to droughts, extreme weather driven by human-caused global heating has become the new normal, causing havoc with the global food supply system.Many products bought and consumed in the UK are at risk of low supply and increased prices.
Continue reading...Climate Change’s Hidden Costs Are the Most Damaging
La mayor crisis mundial de corales ocurrirá en unas semanas, según los científicos
To Fight Climate Change, We Need New ‘Political Technologies’
Bombas de calor: las claves de un aparato de alta eficiencia
Al Gore Thinks Trump Will Lose and Climate Activists Will Triumph
Climate crisis increasing frequency of deadly ocean upwells, study finds
Intense patches of cold water rising from the depths are killing sharks, rays and other creatures, researchers say
A climate-disrupted ocean is pushing sharks, rays and other species to flee ever-hotter water in the tropics, only for them to be killed by increasingly intense upwells of cold water from the depths, a study has found.
One of the authors of the paper described the “eerie” aftermath of a mass die-off of more than 260 marine organisms from 81 species in a singular event of extreme cold upwelling off the coast of South Africa in 2021.
Continue reading...