The rate at which ice is disappearing across the planet has been speeding up, with 65% since the 1990s, a survey of global ice loss using European Space Agency satellite data reveals. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/esa-satellites-show-record-rate-ice-loss…
Tag: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
These Drones Will Plant 40,000 Trees in a Month. By 2028, They’ll Have Planted 1 Billion
Earlier this month, on land north of Toronto that previously burned in a wildfire, drones hovered over fields and fired seed pods into the ground, planting native pine and spruce trees to help restore habitat for birds. From a report: Flash Forest, the Canadian startup behind the project, plans to use its technology to plant 40,000 trees in the area this…
The Arctic hasn’t been this warm for 3 million years
The last time CO2 concentrations reached today’s level was 3 million years ago, during the Pliocene Epoch. Hear from geoscientists who see evolving conditions in the Arctic as an indicator of how climate change could transform the planet. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/arctic-warmest-3-million-years…
Earth’s glaciers and ice sheets are melting
Several new studies released in recent weeks paint a dire picture of the ongoing melting of Earth’s freshwater ice sheets and glaciers, 99% of which are found in Greenland and Antarctica. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/ice-sheets-glaciers-tearing-loose-worst-case-vulnerable…
Earth Barreling Toward ‘Hothouse’ State Not Seen In 50 Million Years, Epic New Climate Record Shows
[I]n a new study published in the journal Science, researchers have analyzed the chemical elements in thousands of foram samples and found that Earth is barreling toward a hothouse state not seen in 50 million years. Live Science reports: The new paper, which comprises decades of deep-ocean drilling missions into a single record, details Earth’s climate swings across the entire Cenozoic…
Major Study Rules Out Super-High and Low Climate Sensitivity To CO2
Scott K. Johnson writes via Ars Technica: One of the most important numbers in climate science is 3C. This isn’t about a projection of future warming or the impacts that come with it, though. It’s about how much warming you get if you double the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. That value can be made more general as a…
Millions of Abandoned Oil Wells Are Leaking Methane, a Climate Menace
More than a century of oil and gas drilling has left behind millions of abandoned wells, many of which are leaching pollutants into the air and water. And drilling companies are likely to abandon many more wells due to bankruptcies, as oil prices struggle to recover from historic lows after the coronavirus pandemic crushed global fuel demand, according to bankruptcy lawyers,…
Climate Models Are Running Red Hot, and Scientists Don’t Know Why
The simulators used to forecast warming have suddenly started giving us less time. From a report: There are dozens of climate models, and for decades they’ve agreed on what it would take to heat the planet by about 3 Celsius. It’s an outcome that would be disastrous — flooded cities, agricultural failures, deadly heat — but there’s been a grim steadiness…
Greenland’s Ice Sheet Melting Seven Times Faster Than In 1990s
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Greenland’s ice sheet is melting much faster than previously thought, threatening hundreds of millions of people with inundation and bringing some of the irreversible impacts of the climate emergency much closer. Ice is being lost from Greenland seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, and the scale and speed of…
‘We Can’t End Climate Change Without Changing Our Eating Habits’
Saturday the Guardian published a call to action by the author of the new book, We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast: [W]e cannot save the planet unless we significantly reduce our consumption of animal products. This is not my opinion, or anyone’s opinion. It is the inconvenient science. Animal agriculture produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the…