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A mantle plume producing almost as much heat as Yellowstone supervolcano appears to be melting part of West Antarctica from beneath. Researchers at NASA have discovered a huge upwelling of hot rock under Marie Byrd Land, which lies between the Ross Ice Shelf and the Ross Sea, is creating vast lakes and rivers under the ice sheet. The presence of a huge mantle plume could explain why the region is so unstable today, and why it collapsed so quickly at the end of the last Ice Age, 11,000 years ago.

President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as his top environmental adviser said Wednesday she is unconvinced by a new U.S. government assessment reaffirming that manmade carbon emissions are the primary cause of climate change. Kathleen Hartnett White testified before a Senate committee weighing her confirmation as chair of the Council on Environmental Quality at the White House. White, who is from Texas, reiterated her view that carbon dioxide is a “plant nutrient,” not a pollutant. Pressed by Democrats about the specific evidence linking carbon emissions to global warming, White grew visibly flustered. “I am not a scientist, but in my...

PARIS - U.S. President Donald Trump, who pulled his country out of the 2015 Paris climate change deal, is “for the time being” not invited to a climate change summit due to be held in the French capital in December, an official in President Emmanuel Macron’s office said. Over a hundred countries, as well as non governmental organizations, have been invited for the Dec.12 summit. “The United States have a bit of a special status for that summit,” the official said.

Paul McCartney criticized President Trump's lax attitude toward climate change in a new interview with the BBC. "You've got someone like Trump who says that it [climate change] is just a hoax," he said. "A lot of people like myself think that's just madness." "It's maybe a good time now to try and focus people's attention and say, 'Look, forget about [Trump] – we can do something,'" he said. "It's not the total solution, but it's part of the solution. A lot of people have been saying this for a long time but there's resistance."

Gov. Jerry Brown challenged the world’s religious leaders to further engage as he minimized the negative effects of President Donald Trump on meeting the climate-change challenge. “The Trump factor is very small, very small indeed,” in comparison to the commitments taking place around the world, Brown said to a burst of applause Saturday at an event organized by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences. “That’s nothing to cheer about, because if it was only Trump that was a problem, we’d have it solved. But that’s not our only problem.

WASHINGTON — Directly contradicting much of the Trump administration’s position on climate change, 13 federal agencies unveiled an exhaustive scientific report on Friday that says humans are the dominant cause of the global temperature rise that has created the warmest period in the history of civilization.

They just took it down, but there was a banner atop the NT Times front page that said, "Breaking News. The White House has stated they believe humans cause global warning." I kid you not.

The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has hit a new high, the UN said Monday, warning that drastic action is needed to achieve targets set by the Paris climate agreement. “Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surged at a record-breaking speed in 2016 to the highest level in 800,000 years,” the World Meteorological Organization said. “Globally averaged concentrations of CO2 reached 403.3 parts per million in 2016, up from 400.00 ppm in 2015 because of a combination of human activities and a strong El Niño event,” it said. The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, the UN weather agency’s...

The new German parliament only met for the first time at the end of October and already the first impasse has been reached. The other parties are refusing to accept the Alternative for Germany (AfD) nominee for Bundestag vice-president. Is this petulance or principle? […] According to a law passed in 1994, each party represented in the parliament gets to have a deputy Bundestag President. The vice-BPs meet with the BP every week to discuss issues which affect the running of the parliament. […] As their candidate for vice-BP, they nominated Albrecht Glaser, a 75-year-old veteran local politician from Frankfurt....

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday he intends to replace the outside experts that advise him on science and public health issues with new board members holding more diverse views. In announcing the changes, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt suggested many previously appointed to the panels were potentially biased because they had received federal research grants. The 22 boards advise EPA on a wide range of issues, including drinking water standards and pesticide safety. “Whatever science comes out of EPA shouldn’t be political science,” said Pruitt, a Republican lawyer who previously served as the attorney general of Oklahoma....

Brooklyn school kids, meet Meatless Mondays. Fifteen public schools in the borough will ditch meat on their Monday menus starting this spring, Mayor de Blasio announced during a visit to P.S. 1 in Sunset Park. And what’s good for the students is good for the mayor, he said. “At Gracie Mansion, we are now going to be instituting Meatless Mondays as well — and that will be for our family meals and for the events we have at Gracie Mansion and when we have guests over for dinner,” de Blasio said. […] “I am very proud of all the students;...

During the last ice age almost all of Canada, along with parts of Europe and Asia, were buried beneath one to two miles of ice. At the same time, sea levels stood 350 to 400 feet lower than today. Sea levels were so low that the entire continental shelf, at least in eastern North America, was above water. Many states on the eastern seaboard were twice as big as today. New Jersey’s shoreline, for example, stood 60 to 100 miles east of its present location. Same in the west. The land between Alaska and Asia rose out of the sea...

EU anti-trust regulators have raided the offices of automaker BMW in Munich, the company said, in a fresh blow to the German car industry already hit by the Dieselgate scandal. The European Commission, which refused to confirm the company targeted, said it “can confirm that as of October 16, 2017, its officials carried out an unannounced inspection at the premises of a car manufacturer in Germany.” The inspection was related to “concerns that several German car manufacturers may have violated EU antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive business practices,” a statement said. The commission added that Daimler was cooperating...

Pope Francis marked UN World Food Day on Monday with a call for world governments to act together to fight the hunger, conflicts and climate change driving mass migration from the developing to the industrialized world. In a speech to the global body’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, Francis said love rather than pity should be placed at the heart of international development efforts, and threw his weight behind efforts in the UN to negotiate a global accord on managed, safe migration. “Is it too much to ask to think of inserting the concept of love into the...

Highway 37 began life as a private toll road, and was later converted to a state highway. But climate change and sea-level rise will doom the road unless something is done. For the short term, the ridiculous two-lane section between Sears Point and Vallejo needs to be widened to match the rest of the road, which is four lanes. Wetlands surrounding the road also need to be restored. It would be reasonable to use some toll money for wetlands restoration, in part to mitigate the effects of construction. Even with the new funding approved by the Legislature by raising the...

WASHINGTON, DC, Oct 13 – “The ‘climate changers’ came out in full force when the EPA announced earlier this week that it was ending the Obama-era war on coal by scrapping Mr. Obama’s Clean Power Plan. But, America has the world’s largest reserves of coal—an asset that should not be dismissed out of hand for a variety of reasons, according to Dan Weber, president of the Association of Mature American Citizens [AMAC].Weber says that extreme restrictions on the use of coal to generate electricity “acted like a national energy tax. They minimized the positive impact of our lowest cost and...

Suppose a crooked prosecutor framed someone and was determined to get a conviction. So he built an entire case on tainted, circumstantial evidence, and testimony from witnesses who had their reasons for wanting the guy in jail. Suppose the prosecutor ignored or hid exculpatory evidence and colluded with the judge to prevent the defendant from presenting a robust defense or cross-examining adverse witnesses. You know what would happen – at least in a fair and just society. The victim would be exonerated and compensated. The prosecutor and judge would be disbarred, fined and jailed. What you may not know is...

The German government is still striving to reduce climate-damaging emissions below the level it was in 1990 by 40 percent. But according to internal calculations by the Federal Ministry of the Environment (BMU) recently submitted to Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) newspaper, hard-working power plants and dirty diesel may ruin the government’s ambitious plans. Just a year ago, the German government had predicted a 2020 figure of between 37 and 40 percent. But in May, when the government had to send updated data to Brussels, a maximum of 35.7 percent was reported. And even this figure is now proving to be too...

All but two Adelie penguin chicks have starved to death in their east Antarctic colony, in a breeding season described as "catastrophic" by experts. It was caused by unusually high amounts of ice late in the season, meaning adults had to travel further for food. It is the second bad season in five years after no chicks survived in 2015.

SACRAMENTO (CBS SF) — California Gov. Jerry Brown warns that catastrophic wildfires will keep ripping through the state as the climate warms. **SNIP** He said a warming climate has contributed to catastrophic wildfires. “That’s the way it is with a warming climate, dry weather and reducing moisture.” said Brown. “These kind of catastrophes have happened and they’ll continue to happen, and we have to be prepared to do everything we can to mitigate.” The governor has positioned himself as a leader in the fight against climate change.