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The latest report from the world’s climate scientists has made clear the size of the challenge if the world is to stay below the global warming limit hoped for in the Paris climate agreement. Unfortunately, with current trends we are likely to cross this threshold within the next two decades because we are already two-thirds of the way there. But how do we know what is driving these climate trends? It comes down to the same kind of detective work that typifies a crime scene investigation, only here we are dealing with a case that encompasses the whole world. Let...

Ramping up wind power in America would also dial up the nation’s temperatures, a new study out of Harvard found. While wind energy is widely celebrated as environmentally friendly, the researchers concluded that a dramatic, all-out expansion in the number of turbines could warm the country even more than climate change from burning coal and other fossil fuels, because of the way the spinning blades disturb the layers of warm and cold air in the atmosphere. Some parts of the central United States are already seeing nights that are up to 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) warmer because of...

"We're going to launch our own satellite — our own damn satellite to figure out where the pollution is and how we’re going to end it," Brown told the audience at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco..."In California, with science under attack, in fact we’re under attack by a lot of people, including Donald Trump, but the climate threat still keeps growing," Brown added. "So, we want to know, what the hell is going on all over the world, all the time?"..."If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite," Brown said back in...

The European Union has agreed a host of climate and energy targets this week: It’s set energy efficiency standards for new buildings, and agreed to climate targets for 2030. Europe has a history of progressive environmental legislation, and it political leaders often position themselves as climate heroes. Recently, French President Emmanuel Macron appears to have moved in on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s traditional territory as international climate champion, with public displays of support for climate science and attacks on US President Donald Trump’s regressive climate policies. But behind the bravado, is Europe doing enough to cut emissions? The short answer,...

California on Friday expanded its market for buying and trading permits to emit greenhouse gases to include the Canadian province of Ontario. The market is the centerpiece of California’s cap-and-trade program, which aims to reduce carbon pollution over time by capping emissions and requiring companies to obtain permits to pollute. Quebec is already part of the market. California is aiming to reduce emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. The two Canadian provinces have similar or stricter goals. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the agreement Friday in Quebec at a meeting with officials of both provinces, capping off...

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Paramount and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions are in talks to make a live action film adaptation of the early 1990s environmental cartoon “Captain Planet.” […] According to reporters Rebecca Ford and Borys Kit, “Sources say the story takes place years after the adventures of the show, with the Captain now a washed-up has-been who needs the kids more than they need him.” …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17xh_VRrnMU Do electric cars really help the environment? President Obama thinks so. So does Leonardo DiCaprio. And many others. The argument goes like this: Regular cars run on gasoline, a fossil fuel that pumps CO2 straight out of the tailpipe and into the atmosphere. Electric cars run on electricity. They don't burn any gasoline at all. No gas; no CO2. In fact, electric cars are often advertised as creating "zero emissions." But do they really? Let's take a closer look. First, there's the energy needed to produce the car. More than a third of the lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions from an...

A scholarly paper explaining why predictions made by climate computer models used by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tend to exaggerate global warming has ignited a political firestorm. Dr. Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, a solar physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, came under attack by environmentalists after co-authoring a peer-reviewed paper explaining “the widening discrepancy between prediction and observation” in climate change models, and members of Congress soon took sides. The scientific paper, entitled “Why Models Run Hot,” concludes that the computer models overstated the impact of CO2 on the climate: “The impact of anthropogenic global...

Even as the eastern U.S. freezes, there’s less cold air in winter than ever before Yet, in what may seem like a paradox, the amount of wintertime cold air circulating around the Northern Hemisphere is shrinking to record low levels. This winter (2014-2015) is on track to see the most depleted cold air supply ever measured. “We are still on pace to break the all-time record — no question about it,” says Jonathan Martin, a professor of meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Despite the brutal cold in the eastern U.S., the whole hemisphere is warmer this winter than it...

European makers of equipment for coal-fired power plants should receive financial help to export it, an EU discussion paper seen by Reuters says, in a clash with the bloc’s declared aim to lead the global fight against climate change. Coal is the most polluting fossil fuel, emitting around twice as much carbon dioxide as natural gas when used to generate power. As a result, the European Union is phasing out subsidies for domestic coal plants by 2018 and the European Investment Bank has set an emissions limit for the energy for which it provides preferential loans, meaning coal is excluded....

Hillary Clinton argued for forceful action to fight climate change in an environmental speech on Monday night, but did not mention the controversial Keystone pipeline. [Snip] “The science of climate change is unforgiving, no matter what the deniers may say, sea levels are rising, ice caps are melting, storms, droughts and wildfires are wreaking havoc,” Clinton said, according to ABC News. “The political challenges are also unforgiving, there is no getting around the fact the kind of ambitious response required to effectively combat climate change is going to be a tough sell at home and around the world at a...

Meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson has long been considered a cool head in the often heated conflict over global warming. In an interview, he defends his decision to join an organization that is skeptical of climate change. The debate over climate change is often a contentious one, and key players in the discussion only rarely switch sides. But late last month, Lennart Bengtsson, the former director of the Hamburg-based Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, one of the world's leading climate research centers, announced he would join the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). ANZEIGEGWPF, based in Britain, is...

Preface:  The scientific method requires allowing a free-for-all of hypotheses, which then rise or fall based upon the results of actual experiments.  In other words, science means that you throw out theories - no matter how good they look on paper - that are disproven by experimental results, and adopt those confirmed by the results. [Economics is supposed to do that, too ... but hasn't.]For example, putting Galileo to death because he didn’t agree with the “accepted” consensus that the Sun revolved around the Earth was not a great example of the scientific method. Instead of conducting experiments to see...

Climate change deniers are headless chickens, Prince Charles has claimed. In an inflammatory speech, the heir to the throne spoke out against “the barrage of sheer intimidation” from what he described as powerful interest groups. Addressing young environmental entrepreneurs at Buckingham Palace, he said skeptics were turning accepted scientific wisdom on its head. […] Charles has long led the public charge against global warming—despite repeated warnings about his “meddling” in contentious global issues. His “headless chickens” jibe ranks among his strongest comments yet. Benny Peiser, of the climate-skeptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, described the attack as aggressive and contentious. …

Scientists say the world’s climate is warming faster than feared because previous predictions were too “optimistic” and overestimated the cooling impact of clouds. As the planet marked its fourth hottest year on record, a study published in the journal Nature found increasing levels of carbon dioxide will lead to thinner ocean clouds and reduce their cooling impact, causing temperature rises of at least 5.6F (3C) over the course of the century. The team of scientists said the findings show some climate models have been too “optimistic” and previous estimates of a minimum temperature rise of only 2.7F (1.5C) could now...

Low temperatures in recent weeks have quickened the annual chill of Lake Michigan, growing sheets of ice a month earlier than usual, disrupting holiday plans for local cruise lines and bringing winter chores for harbor masters and industrial shippers. The early pockets of ice have prompted one Chicago cruise line to cancel its New Year's Eve fireworks cruise for the first time in five years. The company that manages harbors on the lakefront has started efforts to protect their docks from ice. And in the northern part of Lake Michigan, the Coast Guard has been busy breaking through ice, making...

Buried in a lengthy Washington Post article about President Obama’s environmental policy is an illuminating anecdote about just how debatable the administration views climate change — namely, not at all: In an agency-wide address to employees Aug. 1, (Interior Secretary Sally) Jewell took the unusual step of suggesting that no one working for her should challenge the idea that human activity is driving recent warming. “I hope there are no climate-change deniers in the Department of Interior,” she said. The address does not appear to be posted on the department’s website, so the Washington Examiner can only go by the...

Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard has called for development banks with a combined annual lending pot of €130 billion ($170 billion) to end support for fossil fuels in their energy lending policy reviews. “I am particularly keen to see three international financial institutions—the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank—join with their EU and OECD partners to take a lead role in eliminating public support for fossil fuels,” she said in the foreword to a report on bank lending policies in the Western Balkans, published on 25 June. Although all three banks...

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a film star who is also an environmentalist, stole the show at a gathering of mayors committed to climate and energy objectives held in the European Parliament yesterday (24 June). Speaking to the annual meeting of the Covenant of Mayors, Schwarzenegger was applauded as he said that real drama was not in Hollywood movies, but in the climate change challenge. “If we do nothing, we are on track for a temperature increase of 3.6 to 5.3 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. We have already seen in California the changes. There is no...

Climate experts have long predicted that temperatures would rise in parallel with greenhouse gas emissions. But, for 15 years, they haven't. In a SPIEGEL interview, meteorologist Hans von Storch discusses how this "puzzle" might force scientists to alter what could be "fundamentally wrong" models. SPIEGEL: Mr. Storch, Germany has recently seen major flooding. Is global warming the culprit? Storch: I'm not aware of any studies showing that floods happen more often today than in the past. I also just attended a hydrologists' conference in Koblenz, and none of the scientists there described such a finding. SPIEGEL: But don't climate simulations...