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A brief newsletter about climate change, written by myself.

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The newsletter describes what changes our planet should expect to see in the near future, as well as the slower changes that will occur over the next few years; following this the letter goes on to discuss how the government is, "Using the past to predict the future".

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Climate Change: Variations in Timing

Across the globe, in response to increases in heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide (CO ₂) in the atmosphere, temperature and precipitation patterns are changing. The rate of climatic change in the next century is expected to be significantly higher than it has been in the past. At our current rate of emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that CO ₂ levels in the atmosphere will double or triple during the next century, and the climate system will respond.

Scientists expect some portions of the Earth system to respond more rapidly to the changing composition of the atmosphere than others. For instance, the temperature of the atmosphere and the uppermost layer of the ocean are likely to adjust to new conditions more quickly than the deep ocean or thick ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica. As a result of the different response rates, scientists predict that regional climatic changes will vary. For example, climate models project that some areas will see more precipitation and others will have less.

Rapid Changes

Climate scientists expect to see the following changes within decades to hundreds of years:

Retreating or vanishing glacial ice

Disappearance of year-round sea ice in the Arctic

Replacement of polar tundra by conifer forests

Slower Changes

The following changes are likely to occur over hundreds to thousands of years:

Changes in melt patterns on Greenland Ice Sheet

Increased rates of flows of ice streams in Greenland and Antarctica

Increase in thermal expansion of ocean

Disappearance of West Antarctic Ice Sheet

Ocean acidification (related to CO2 emissions rather than warming)

Decreases in ocean oxygen levels

Changes to the Seasons

Though Earth will always have distinct seasons because of its tilted axis, one expected signal of climate change is a shift in the length and character of summer and winter seasons. In general, summer temperatures will arrive earlier than they currently do, especially at high latitudes. Additionally, they will be hotter and last longer than they do now. Future winters will arrive later and be shorter and warmer. Around the world, climatologists have already observed increases in the number of days of record heat, and concurrent decreases in the number of days of record cold.

Using the Past to Predict the Future

While the climate record has no perfect analog for the changes we expect to occur in the future, we can use a climatic event that happened 55 million years ago-the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)-as an example of our potential climate future. At the time of the PETM, natural records (climate proxies) show that the abundance of CO ₂ in the atmosphere rose to 2000 parts per million within the span of 10,000 years. Subsequently, Earth's average global temperature rose by approximately 11 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius). The result of this rapid temperature increase wiped out plants and animals that couldn't adapt to the new conditions.

Whether current plants and animals will be able to adapt to upcoming changes in climate remains an open question. Just as in past climatic shifts, some species will flourish while others will struggle, or simply vanish. Exactly how future climate will develop is an ongoing question - one that is being closely monitored by scientists and citizens around the world.

References and Resources:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
AR5 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2014

U.S. Global Change Research Program
Program Information
Fourth National Climate Assessment (2018)
Online Report and Downloads

World Climate Research Program
8-minute video: 40-years of International Climate Science

Information and Teaching Strategies
Reconstructing the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

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Across the globe, in response to increases in heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide (CO 2) in the atmosphere, temperature and precipitation patterns are changing. The rate of climatic change in the next century is expected to be significantly higher than it has been in the past.

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Prime time movie star Leonardo DiCaprio announces the release of his new climate change documentary, "Ice on Fire", DiCaprio has been a huge presence in environmental and climate change issues, releasing multiple projects, and opening many charities to fund the fight against climate change.

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Leonardo DiCaprio highlights the various efforts around the world to curb climate change in the trailer for the new documentary Ice on Fire. The film was directed by Leila Conners and will premiere June 11th on HBO.

DiCaprio produced the film and serves as its narrator. In the new trailer, he touches on the devastating impact of the melting ice caps and how the effects of climate change in the arctic will fuel flooding, droughts and more around the world.

But rather than harping on the dire dangers of climate change, the trailer quickly shifts focus to the myriad efforts to fight it, such as giant solar power arrays, underwater kelp farms and even machines that can pull carbon out of the air and permanently remove it by pumping it underground and turning it into rock.

"My partners and I made Ice on Fire to give a voice to the scientists and researchers who work tirelessly every day on the front lines of climate change," DiCaprio said in a recent statement. "We wanted to make a film that depicts the beauty of our planet while highlighting much-needed solutions across renewable energy and carbon sequestration. This film does more than show what is at stake if we continue on a course of inaction and complacency - it shows how, with the help of dedicated scientists, we can all fight back. I hope audiences will be inspired to take action to protect our beautiful planet."

DiCaprio has produced several documentaries about climate change and the environment in recent years. Earlier this year, he worked on Sea of Shadows, about the world's smallest whale, the endangered vaquita, while his previous projects include Before the Flood, A Plastic Ocean and Virunga.

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Leonardo DiCaprio Details Fight to Curb Climate Change in 'Ice on Fire' Trailer

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Leonardo DiCaprio highlights the various efforts around the world to curb climate change in the trailer for the new documentary Ice on Fire. The film was directed by Leila Conners and will premiere June 11th on HBO. DiCaprio produced the film and serves as its narrator.

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The article below argues that if the EPA (environmental protection agency) expresses no concern towards our climate issue, than neither should us citizens; the article claims that all climate change arguments are hogwash and it takes only a glimpse to understand that there is, "really no issue".

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Despite numerous climate strikes happening across the globe this week, the earth is happy and healthy.

This weekend, thousands of people across continents linked up in solidarity in an effort to initiate new environmental policies around the globe. But what they overlooked was massive: the fact that the Earth is totally and completely fine.

Sure, it's on fire, and the sun gives us cancer and the air isn't actually safe to breathe, but all it takes is a look around to know that there is really no issue.

Just think about it: succulents flourish in dorm rooms, trees continue to grow and, even though plastic grass is replacing real grass, there is real grass in some places, probably. All you have to do to soothe your racing (and burning) heart is take a nice deep breath of fresh(ish) air and leave it to the leaders to handle the situation.

The United States of America, the most powerful country in the world, has assured its citizens that there is nothing to fear. If even the director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expressing no concern, there is no reason we should either.

After all, leaders know best. Deni Er, the head of the EPA, did not approve of the climate strikes because "the only real issue with the climate is that my air conditioning is broken." The director has previously stated that "if the planet gets hotter, all we need to do is install more AC units and spend more days at the pool," before adding that they "hate the snow anyway."

The president agrees that there is no true environmental crisis, instead placing the blame on China and calling the whole thing a "big, huge, big, huge, big, big, huge hoax. Huge."

While some do not believe that the director of the EPA or the president of the United States are trustworthy, one only needs to run a quick fact check to discover that the theory is wrong. Nearly 2% of what the president says has factual basis. Therefore, one of the 50 times he has called the climate crisis a hoax, he was telling the truth. Global warming is all a big scam and he's proved it.

So, before it becomes your time to stop, drop and roll away from the fires just take a nice dip into a sea of plastic and relax. Nothing is wrong. Everything is fine. America said so.

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Despite numerous climate strikes happening across the globe this week, the earth is happy and healthy. This weekend, thousands of people across continents linked up in solidarity in an effort to initiate new environmental policies around the globe. But what they overlooked was massive: the fact that the Earth is totally and completely fine.

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Bill Nye gives an introduction t what Climate Change is and how it works, and why it is having such a monstrous affect on our planet.

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Climate Change 101 with Bill Nye | National Geographic

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The video brings up how our world's once stable climate system was prime with resources and a healthy atmosphere, but now the climate a drastically changed and is having a negative affect on our ecosystem as well as affecting every aspect of human life on Earth.

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Understanding The Science Of Climate Change | Earth's Survival | Spark

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According to the Harvard Business Review due to global warming's effect on natural disasters the government will require more middle-class taxpayers to aid the billion dollar disaster relief programs across the country.

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Executive Summary

Homes, offices, factories, and other valuable structures in the U.S. are increasingly threatened by climate change. Coastal areas where economic activity is concentrated is at particular risk of flooding from rising sea levels. But few Americans are thinking seriously about how to build resilience in areas threatened by a changing climate. My research indicates that there are five basic choices in investing in climate resilience: reinforce (for example, by building higher sea walls to protect against sea rise); rebuild after disaster; rebound (by, for example, introducing building features designed to be flooded without major damage to the overall structure); restrict through strict zoning laws; and retreat (by moving assets and people away from climate-endangered areas). Together, they can be used as a decision-support tool for what to do with assets exposed to climate risk.

Westend61/Getty Images

As fires, floods, and droughts increasingly threaten homes, businesses, and other institutions, climate risk has become financial risk. A National Bureau of Economic Research paper recently concluded that mortgages written on homes in exposed locations are being shed by banks and absorbed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-backed mortgage guarantors. This implies that homeowners and investors have been making location decisions without properly pricing the cost of potential peril, and that the government has been enabling the oversight. Some are even warning that this market failure could lead to a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis, which was also triggered by bad mortgages.

It's not just homeowners investing recklessly - many businesses have been equally short-sighted in where they place new assets, such as factories, and what to do with existing assets in once-safe areas now threatened by these perils. While laudatory efforts continue to mitigate climate change at the international level, it's long past time to accept that the climate is already irreversibly changing, and we must adjust our mindset accordingly. We can't just keep piling sandbags, pumping basements, dousing flames, and expecting government bailouts forever; a methodology is needed for homeowners, businesses, mortgage holders, governments - all of society - to figure out which assets to reinforce and what other courses of action are available.

Alas, we seem to be headed in the wrong direction. While virtually no private insurance companies retain residential flood risk in Florida, Virginia, and other coastal states due to sea rise, government-subsidized programs such as NFIP continue to keep residences insured. Making things even worse is a general lack of restrictions on where one can build and what can be built. A society that prides itself on free will and self-determination is loath to say what a property owner can and cannot build on their own land as long as it meets rudimentary building and zoning codes: So more and more people move into harm's way in flood plains, low-lying coastal areas, and tinder dry western landscapes.

Why this dysfunction? To begin with, all three of these factors - mortgages, insurance, and land development policies - are by design backward-looking. They rely on history of lending defaults, history of insurance claims, and history of floods and fires to make determinations. This is logical; there is plenty of hard empirical data to draw from, and a switch to looking forward would risk becoming a matter of speculation over the merits of one modeling method or another. There is also plenty of market incentive to keep housing prices high. But the look-backward approach seems overwhelmed today as climate events - and follow-on effects on the ground - are moving so fast.

There is a better way. My research and that of others indicate that there are five basic choices in investing in resilience: reinforce, rebuild, rebound, restrict, and retreat. Together, they can be used as a decision-support tool for what to do with assets exposed to climate risk.

Reinforce: This is often the default recommendation in the face of climate-related perils. But only in some circumstances is it is the rightreaction. A good example is Texas Medical Center (TMC) in Houston. Following severe damages from Hurricane Allison in 2001, TMC invested hundreds of millions of dollars in resilience improvements, including flood bulkheads, sky bridges, elevation of electrical equipment, and more. When Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017, Houston was soaked by unthinkable amounts of rain and the regional flooding persisted for weeks - but with its resilience interventions in place, Texas Medical Center hardly missed a beat. Investing in reinforcement made sense in this instance because, first, the direct and indirect costs of being hit were huge; the hospital had the ability to raise the capital even though the investments in resilience were not sure to pay off (since there might have never been another big storm). And second, because the incremental capital spending relative to the entire balance sheet was manageable. But not every potential investment in resilience makes economic sense. We can't pay for a blanket policy to resist sea rise and rainfall and fire in every situation forever, regardless of cost/benefit. When should a different route be taken?

Retreat: Consider the opposite scenario. After several consecutive years of being overwhelmed by riverine flooding, multiple small shopkeepers and restaurants in Ellicott City, Maryland, collectively abandoned the historic downtown for higher, dryer land. This was the right course of action for them: the cumulative flooding had a substantial cost relative to their balance sheets; the price to reinforce (by raising floors or building sea walls) was too high, and resources were thin.

Rebound: In Miami and Miami Beach, most new commercial or condo buildings on the water are built with extra-high first floor elevations ("freeboard"), with expensive equipment located out of harm's way on the second floor or higher, and with furnishings and materials at ground level and in the basement that can survive temporary sea-water inundation, be pumped out, be quickly cleaned, and then put back in service. The famous wooden plank walkways on St. Mark's Square in Venice are similar: They embrace neither reinforcement or retreat, but rather are focused on " living with water " - how to rebound in a cost-effective way.

Rebuild: This is essentially the path chosen by the homeowners in Houston, Texas or the Hampton Roads area in Virginia, where FEMA has paid to rebuild thousands of homes multiple times each. Rebuilding is a great choice - particularly if you are rich or if you can use someone else's money. The long-term questions, though, are: Will there always be that money available? Will it go to those who are most in need or to help higher income individuals, as reported by U.S. News and World Report? And, of course, how long will the other taxpayers support aiding those in danger zones? In recent years, Congress has authorized about $200 billion per year for disaster relief in California, Iowa, Texas, Florida, New York, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere (on top of subsidizing the NFIP). It's not clear that, in a time of deficits, this largesse will be perpetual.

Restrict: This is a strategy that the private sector mortgage and insurance companies appear to already be following - they are not investing in harm's way and, based on press reports, they are drawing back. Some other large asset owners such as REITs or retailers thinking about store locations are avoiding purchasing or building properties in high-risk areas. But there is a public policy angle, as well: Recently the utility PG&E was forced to pick up the cost of property damage from California wildfires. A strong argument could be made that the local government should have restricted these structures from being built in the first place.

In the coming years, growth pressures for sure will increase in many attractive locations (such as coastal cities and western states). Americans will be forced to make some tough decisions. Subsidized mortgages and artificially cheap insurance have let us put off the hard reckonings a little longer, but if a severe price correction (and subsequent economic shock) is to be avoided, all asset owners in potentially exposed locations will need to pick one of five paths outlined above. The right choice in each situation depends on circumstances, the level of exposure, the cost of potential damages, the cost to reinforce, and resources available. The challenge for homeowners, investors, mayors, and all of us is to look ahead, not behind, and to make these choices with intent - before circumstances take the choices out of our hands.

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Climate Change Is Going to Transform Where and How We Build

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Executive Summary Homes, offices, factories, and other valuable structures in the U.S. are increasingly threatened by climate change. Coastal areas where economic activity is concentrated is at particular risk of flooding from rising sea levels. But few Americans are thinking seriously about how to build resilience in areas threatened by a changing climate.

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Despite the many promises made by energy companies to take climate change seriously; many large corporations continue to burn large amounts of fossil fuels, and increase venting and flaring processes.

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Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter.
When leaders from Exxon Mobil and BP gathered last month with other fossil-fuel executives to declare they were serious about climate change, they cited progress in curbing an energy-wasting practice called flaring - the intentional burning of natural gas as companies drill faster than pipelines can move the energy away.

But in recent years, some of these same companies have significantly increased their flaring, as well as the venting of natural gas and other potent greenhouse gases directly into the atmosphere, according to data from the three largest shale-oil fields in the United States.

The practice has consequence for climate change because natural gas is a potent contributor to global warming. It also wastes vast amounts of energy: Last year in Texas, venting and flaring in the Permian Basin oil field alone consumed more natural gas than states like Arizona and South Carolina use in a year.

Exxon's venting and flaring has surged since 2017 to record highs, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of gas produced, the numbers show. Exxon flared or vented 70 percent more gas in 2018 than it did the previous year, according to the data, bringing an end to several years of improvements.

Flaring and venting are legal under state laws, and oil companies acknowledge the practices are wasteful. Typically, venting or flaring occur because there aren't pipelines close enough to a well to capture and transport the gas, or because gas prices are so low that it's cheaper to discard the gas than to try to sell it. Venting can also occur during equipment breakdowns.

Since 2011, the period for which reliable numbers are available, Exxon has flared or vented more gas overall than any other operator in the three oil fields, which include the Eagle Ford and Permian basins in the Southwest, and the Bakken straddling the Canadian border. Companies often treat natural gas as a byproduct when drilling for oil, which is far more lucrative.

The data also shows that BP this year acquired some of the most polluting sites in the Permian and then allowed flaring and venting to increase. BP burned off 17 percent of the gas it produced in the Permian between April and June of this year (the first full quarter after the acquisition) making it the worst performer in percentage terms among the top 50 producers. In the year-earlier quarter, BP had burned only 10 percent.

When asked about its practices, Exxon Mobil said it was committed to a 25 percent reduction in flaring globally by 2020, compared to 2016 levels, to address environmental concerns.

BP said it was investing in upgrades at its Permian wells that would eliminate much of its flaring. The company also said it was not putting new wells in the area unless they had access to a gas pipeline, reducing the need to burn off or vent excess natural gas.

The analysis provides one of the clearest pictures to date of the companies behind the vast emissions of natural gas that have resulted from America's shale oil boom, fueled by the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to unlock fossil fuels from shale rock.

Last year, operators across the three basins together flared or vented a record 320 million cubic feet of gas, more than 40 percent above levels seen just five years ago. The pace for the first two quarters of 2019 has been even higher.

Rystad Energy, an energy analytics company that compiles industry data from state-level corporate disclosures, provided the venting and flaring data to The New York Times, which performed an independent analysis. Separately, an organization affiliated with Greenpeace, Unearthed, also did its own initial analysis of a similar set of data.

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A Chevron site near Midland, Tex. Credit Jessica Lutz/Reuters

But flaring releases carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, where it traps the sun's heat, driving climate change. Venting directly emits methane, an even more potent greenhouse gas in the shorter term.

Both practices are "a tremendous waste of a natural resource," said Riccardo Puliti, global director for energy at the World Bank, which leads a global public-private partnership that aims to reduce the practice. The World Bank estimates that flaring last year emitted more than 350 million tons of carbon dioxide globally, equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions of almost 75 million cars.

"We can't afford for this to continue unabated," Mr. Puliti said.

Shale oil has made the United States the world's largest oil producer. But shale wells tend to dry up more quickly than conventional oil fields. That means producers must drill constantly to keep their oil production steady, while venting or flaring off the gas before pipelines can catch up.

The increase comes even as a group of the world's biggest oil companies, including Exxon and BP, announced last month on the sidelines of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York that they had made progress in reducing global methane emissions, and that its members were on track to meet a target of keeping methane emissions to below 0.25 percent of global production by 2025. BP separately said this year that it had already met an even more stringent target of 0.2 percent.

But environmental groups have urged companies to provide a better accounting of how they measure their emissions and tally those percentages, which are not easily calculated from flaring or venting statistics.

"They're saying, 'Here's our number. Trust us,'" said Ben N. Ratner, a senior director with the Environmental Defense Fund, a group that works with oil companies to track and reduce methane. "There's been no breakdown of how they arrived at that number. And we don't have all the facts, the transparency, to assess whether that's accurate or not."

Natural gas, a potent contributor to global warming, is often seen as unprofitable. Video by Jessica Lutz for The New York Times Credit

When an energy company strikes oil and begins to pump, less-valuable natural gas comes up alongside the oil. That gas could be gathered into pipelines and sold, but drilling has far outpaced pipeline construction, particularly in the booming oil fields of the Permian and Bakken.

Rather than delay drilling, producers will choose to vent or flare.

Many smaller oil producers flare or vent 100 percent of the gas their wells produce, the data shows. In those cases, "gas becomes more like a liability," said Artem Abramov, an industry analyst at Rystad Energy. "It's just much cheaper for companies to get rid of it."

The shale-oil producer Exco Resources highlights this trend. This year it applied with Texas regulators to flare almost all the gas it produced in South Texas, even though a pipeline already exists to move it away, because it is cheaper to release the gas than pay the fees to pipe it off and sell it.

In an unusual showdown, the pipeline's operator, Williams Companies, is now challenging Exco, saying that allowing it to flare even though its wells were already hooked up to a pipeline would lead to "unnecessary and wasteful flaring of billions of cubic feet of natural gas." Still, Texas regulators granted Exco's flaring permit. Williams is urging the state to reconsider.

Exco declined to comment.

The Trump administration, as part of its wide-ranging rollback of regulations to fight climate change, is moving to eliminate Obama-era rules that would have required oil and gas producers to more aggressively detect and fix gas leaks, and to rein in flaring or venting. Fossil fuel companies have been divided on how to respond, with some arguing the rules were too costly.

Among other worst performers are independent petroleum producers, like Marathon Oil, that drill almost exclusively for oil and treat the natural gas that comes up alongside it as a byproduct.

Last year, Marathon Oil vented or flared almost half of the gas produced at its wells in the Bakken. In this year's first half, that proportion increased to more than half. And since 2018, Marathon Oil's overall venting and flaring has surpassed even Exxon's.

A Marathon spokeswoman said the company was "actively pursuing" ways to reduce its emissions.

Chevron, on the other hand, has demonstrated more discipline over the past three years, keeping flaring and venting to less than 3 percent of the gas it drilled, the data shows. Analysts said the company appeared to have stricter internal rules that discourage drilling in areas that offer few prospects of economically recovering the natural gas produced.

"We built a strategy early in our Permian development that, whenever possible, we would not flare to produce," Veronica Flores-Paniagua, a Chevron spokeswoman, said in a statement.

In an interview, Brian Pugh, chief innovation officer at BP's onshore oil and gas business in the United States, said the company was investing in new, centralized gathering and compression facilities in the Permian that would enable it to capture and sell more gas instead of flaring and venting it. Nearly all new wells there will connect to the new facilities, the first of which will go online in the first half of 2020, Mr. Pugh said.

"If you look at us this time next year, we'll be starting to look very, very different," he said.

Video by Jessica Lutz for The New York Times Credit

Hiroko Tabuchi is a climate reporter. She joined The Times in 2008, and was part of the team awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. She previously wrote about Japanese economics, business and technology from Tokyo. @HirokoTabuchi * Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: Gas Flaring on the Rise Even as Energy Giants Promise to Cut It Back. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Despite Their Promises, Giant Energy Companies Burn Away Vast Amounts of Natural Gas

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Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd: , our email newsletter. When leaders from Exxon Mobil and BP gathered last month with other fossil-fuel executives to declare they were serious about climate change, they cited progress in curbing an energy-wasting practice called flaring - the intentional burning of natural gas as companies drill faster than pipelines can move the energy away.

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Why We Need To Take Climate Change Seriously. 

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Why We Need To Take Climate Change Seriously. 

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The Environmental Defense Fund discusses, what is causing the harmful effects, why just a half-degree means so much, as well as what we can as a global community can do to prevent further warming on the planet.

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In just the past few decades:

What's causing this climate crisis?

It's mainly us.

Humans are the main cause of climate change - we burn fossil fuels and chop down forests, causing average temperatures to rise worldwide. That global warming trend is increasingly disrupting our climate - the average weather over many years.

Earth has already warmed by about 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century, before industry started to boom.

While we experience the effects, we're on our way toward 1.5 degrees C (2.7 F) by as early as 2030.
7 facts about climate change
Why a half-degree more is such a big deal

Climate change is breeding storms with heavier rainfall, flooding farms - such as this one, which grows cotton.

A warmer world - even by a half-degree Celsius - has more evaporation, leading to more water in the atmosphere. Such changing conditions put our agriculture, health, water supply and more at risk.

Picture a North Carolina cotton farm that's been around since 1960, with global average temperatures rising by roughly half a degree since it grew its first crop.

The increased evaporation and additional moisture to the atmosphere has led to 30% more intense rain during heavy downpours in that part of the U.S.

Then a hurricane like 2018's Florence - already strengthened by warmer oceans and higher seas - dumps this excess rainfall on the farm. The crops get more flooded and damaged than they did half a century ago.

It's how you go from half-degree of warming to economic hardship.
Are record-breaking hurricanes our new normal?
There's still time to act

Whether it's a shift of 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees, these warming levels aren't magic thresholds. Every rise in warming is worse for the planet than the last.

But they're not inevitable.

It's not too late to slow the pace of climate change and avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis - as long as we act today. With your help, we can attack this challenge.

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This is why fighting climate change is so urgent

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In the past few decades, rising temperatures, melting ice and wildfires have worsened; here's EDF's take on why tackling the climate crisis is so important.

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The Difficulty of Solving Climate Change. 

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The Difficulty of Solving Climate Change. 

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The video shows a non-profit climate interactive program that has MIT business students participate in a simulation where they each are assigned to a group, and each group represents a country; the primary goal of these students is to figure out how reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lower global temperature.

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The Simulation That Shows How Hard it Will Be to Solve Climate Change

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President Donald Trump announces that Climate change will not be on the agenda at the next G7 summit.

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The climate crisis will not be formally discussed at the G7 summit in June next year, Donald Trump's acting White House chief of staff said on Thursday.

"Climate change will not be on the agenda," Mick Mulvaney told reporters, without elaborating.

Mulvaney announced that the 2020 summit of seven of the world's most powerful industrialised countries will take place at the National Doral Miami, one of the president's golf resorts in Florida, despite widespread ethics concerns and an ongoing impeachment inquiry into Trump's conduct.

From weakening regulation on vehicle emissions to blocking warnings about how coastal parks could flood and withdrawing funding for conservation programs, the Trump administration is accused of consistently ignoring, burying and undermining climate science.

The White House's stance is likely to be widely criticized, possibly even by members of the president's own party. Florida is on the frontline of the climate crisis, facing ever stronger hurricanes and rising sea levels. While the state's elected leaders had long denied climate science, they have recently started to change their tune. In August, the Republican senator Marco Rubio wrote that "climate change is a real problem".

The state's recently elected Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has hired the ex-hostage negotiator Dr Julia Nesheiwat as the state's first chief resilience officer in charge of preparing Florida "for the environmental, physical and economic impacts of climate change, especially sea-level rise ".

Gabriel Filippelli, a climate scientist who advised the state department under the Obama administration, criticized the administration for ignoring the crisis.

"It means that irony is definitely NOT on the agenda!" Filippelli said on Twitter, referring to the decision to ignore the source of rising temperatures and sea-level rise at an international meeting outside of one of the country's most climate-vulnerable cities.

Paul Bledsoe, a climate adviser to Bill Clinton, said Trump won't be able to prevent other countries from discussing the crisis anyway.

"The other nations will no doubt bring up climate change in both an economic and security context," Bledsoe said. "The issue is going to come up frequently because it is increasingly a matter of public safety, national security and the economic costs of impacts."

But even if climate were on the agenda, Bledsoe said: "It's not like under Trump there were going to be any big breakthroughs anyway."

"It's deeply ironic that the US state most vulnerable immediately to climate change impacts will host a meeting at which global leaders will be forced by the US to largely ignore the topic," Bledsoe added.
Topics

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Climate crisis will not be discussed at G7 next year, says Trump official

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The climate crisis will not be formally discussed at the G7 summit in June next year, Donald Trump's acting White House chief of staff said on Thursday. "Climate change will not be on the agenda," Mick Mulvaney told reporters, without elaborating.

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The UN discusses how climate change is he "defining issue of our time" and how greenhouse gas emissions are effecting our planet.

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The AFN (Alaska Federation of Natives) declares a state of emergency on climate change.

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The Alaska Federation of Natives has declared a state of emergency on climate change.

On Saturday, delegates considered dozens of resolutions, including one that would see AFN form a climate change task force.

The resolution was drafted at the earlier Elders and Youth Conference and was presented to AFN by two high school students.

Debate on whether to adopt the resolution became a proxy fight for how to combat climate change and whether there could be a risk that outside interests would try to prevent development of Alaska Native lands.

15-year-old Nanieezh Peter of Arctic Village emotionally presented the resolution to hundreds of delegates. She urged AFN to declare a state of emergency on climate change, saying its threats have to be tackled now.

"We shouldn't have to tell those in charge that we want to survive," she said.

One-by-one delegates stood to support the resolution or offer caution. All praised the two young women who drafted the resolution.

Crawford Paktokak, chairman of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation board of directors, argued forcefully that environmentalists were using climate regulations to tell Alaska Natives how to hunt and to halt resource development.

Paktokak unsuccessfully offered an amendment that would have specifically mentioned the importance of development.

The sometimes-heated but respectful debate saw 17-year-old Quannah Chasing Horse, a member of the Gwich'in Youth Council, tearfully urge action to curb climate change.

"We are here to fight with you, not to fight you," she said.

Victor Joseph, President of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, joined a chorus of people urging support for the resolution.

In a speech met with rapturous applause, Joseph said the young women had spoken eloquently and that AFN should support the proposed action.

After an hour of debate, the resolution was adopted by AFN. Chasing Horse and Peter shared a hug as the crowd clapped.

Greg Razo, the Vice President of Government Relations for Cook Inlet Regional, Inc., was the master of ceremonies during debates. After the resolution was adopted, he praised Chasing Horse and Peter and urged them to both go to law school.
Copyright 2019 KTUU. All rights reserved.

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afn declares climate change state of emergency

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AFN declares climate change state of emergency

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The Alaska Federation of Natives has declared a state of emergency on climate change. On Saturday, delegates considered dozens of resolutions, including one that would see AFN form a climate change task force. The resolution was drafted at the earlier Elders and Youth Conference and was presented to AFN by two high school students.

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The article discusses how climate change may affect the billion dollar wine industry.

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Harvest season has just begun in California's Napa Valley. But the $160 billion wine industry could dry up if something isn't done to combat a changing climate. As a grape ripens, the compounds within it perform a delicate, shifting balancing act for the right taste, texture and color - so any shift in climate conditions can be detrimental to the vines.

Andy Beckstoffer has been growing grapes and providing them for some of the biggest names in California wine country since the early 1970s. But he's concerned about his future harvest.

"The big deal is the erratic nature that we have with climate here," Beckstoffer told CBS News' Jamie Yuccas. "We have bugs we never heard of. We have diseases we never heard of. We've changed the way we farm because of it."

In Napa Valley, Cabernet is king. It's also where researchers are trying to save it with 11 different projects happening all around the area.

Beckstoffer Vineyards is investing tens of millions of dollars partnering with U.C. Davis for the world's most ambitious Cabernet Sauvignon root stock and clone trial. They're looking for more resilient combinations of Cabernet.

Vineyard manager Clint Nelson and researcher Kaan Kurtural said the area has heated up by nearly two degrees a year. That may not sound like much, but viticulturists say it's enough to eventually make Cabernet grapes extinct.

"You cannot just say, 'Oh we gotta think about it 20 to 30 years from now.' You have to take action now," Kurtural said.

"We don't look at this as just a Northern California trial experiment, we look at this as an industry-wide trial," said Clint Nelson.

U.C. Davis is using shade nets, switching from horizontal to vertical planting, and various technology to grow a better, stronger grape.

Researchers are testing 100 combinations, but it will take at least six years to yield results. Like any fine wine, Beckstoffer says it will take time.

The fate of one of America's most famous valleys, however, may hang in the balance.

"We'll use that data to not only fight climate change," Beckstoffer said. "But in the best spot, hopefully to improve the wine quality. That's the big deal."

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Climate change is coming for your Cabernet

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Harvest season has just begun in California's Napa Valley. But the $160 billion wine industry could dry up if something isn't done to combat a changing climate. As a grape ripens, the compounds within it perform a delicate, shifting balancing act for the right taste, texture and color - so any shift in climate conditions can be detrimental to the vines.

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The article discusses a solution to climate change, and how a carbon tax could support both the economy, and the public.

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Smoke belches from a coal-fired power station near Datong, in China's northern Shanxi province. (Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)

IN AN ideal world, our leaders would acknowledge the danger of climate change and seek the best way to combat it. If they did, they would easily find an answer that is effective and progressive: The latest bulletin from the International Monetary Fund maps what it would take to restrain warming to tolerable levels without wasting massive amounts of money or unnecessarily harming workers, companies and households.

In our far-from-ideal world, President Trump can't even acknowledge the problem, and the Democrats who call for immediate action seem to be running from the best solutions.

The IMF reiterates what economists have long understood: Enacting a carbon tax is "the single most powerful and efficient tool" because pricing mechanisms "make it costlier to emit greenhouse gases and allow businesses and individuals to choose how to conserve energy or switch to greener sources through a range of opportunities." Politicians should favor choice and flexibility over central planning. "People and firms will identify which changes in behavior reduce emissions - for example, purchasing a more efficient refrigerator versus an electric car - at the lowest cost."

By contrast, "regulations might not leave sufficient flexibility for households and firms to find least-cost options." Regulators might not foresee or support novel technologies, and intrusive rules "motivate firms to collude with officials to alter or evade the regulations." They also provide weak incentives for companies to invest in a wide range of better technology, because only the state's favored approaches to decarbonizing the economy would be rewarded. For these reasons, regulatory and other alternative approaches cost society some 50 to 100 percent more than a carbon tax for the same environmental benefits.

The IMF found that the average global price is a paltry $2 per ton of carbon dioxide, while the world requires a $75-per-ton global carbon tax by 2030 to keep warming below the 2-degree Celsius threshold scientists advise. Electricity prices would rise 70 percent on average - though only 53 percent in the United States - and gasoline prices 5 percent to 15 percent in most places.

But that's the picture before one considers what the money raised by a carbon tax could do. If governments recycled the revenue back to low-income and vulnerable people, and cut economically inefficient taxes - such as income taxes - a $50-per-ton carbon tax would feel to the economy more like $20 per ton. The plan would help low-income households and place a higher burden on the upper-income bracket. There could also be money for essential research and development to aid the energy transition.

So is this the plan that the Democratic presidential candidates have embraced? If only. Though former vice president Joe Biden and former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke have cautiously acknowledged the importance of carbon pricing, they are far more specific in their ideas for spending lots of money. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) recently adopted a regulate-and-spend program. And Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would have the federal government establish its own utilities and build its own power-generation facilities, from scratch, according to, yes, a central plan.

The science does not change because politicians deny that humans are warming the planet. Likewise the economics do not change because politicians find them ideologically or politically inconvenient.

Catherine Rampell: Everyone's got a climate plan. So where's the carbon tax?

The Post's View: World leaders are failing our future generations on climate change

Jennifer Rubin: Trump's climate change denial is a political loser

Catherine Rampell: Trump's plan for the economy: Make Drinking Water Dirty Again

Wenonah Hauter: The carbon tax fallacy

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Opinion | There's an effective and progressive solution for climate change. Why won't Democrats embrace it?

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IN AN ideal world, our leaders would acknowledge the danger of climate change and seek the best way to combat it. If they did, they would easily find an answer that is effective and progressive: The latest bulletin from the International Monetary Fund maps what it would take to restrain warming to tolerable levels without wasting massive amounts of money or unnecessarily harming workers, companies and households.