Category Archives: Climate change

Climate change in deep oceans could be seven times faster by middle of century, report says

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Uneven heating could have major impact on marine wildlife, as species that rely on each other for survival are forced to move

Rates of climate change in the world’s ocean depths could be seven times higher than current levels by the second half of this century even if emissions of greenhouse gases were cut dramatically, according to new research.

Different global heating at different depths could have major impacts on ocean wildlife, causing disconnects as species that rely on each other for survival are forced to move.

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German court rules against Volkswagen in ‘dieselgate’ scandal

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Carmaker must pay compensation to motorist who bought minivan fitted with emissions-cheating software

Volkswagen has lost a landmark legal battle in Germany’s highest civil court over compensation for the buyer of a secondhand minivan fitted with emissions-cheating software.

The world’s largest carmaker must take back the plantiff’s manipulated car and pay him €28,257.74 (£25,325), in a case that will lead to the company paying compensation to 60,000 German VW owners.

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Australia’s ‘failing’ environmental laws will fuel further public health crises, Nobel laureate warns

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Bushfires and Covid-19 highlight connection between human health and natural world, states letter by almost 200 doctors and scientists

Leading health professionals, including a Nobel laureate and a former Australian of the Year, say the government must put human health “front and centre” in a new generation of environment laws in the aftermath of the Covid-19 and bushfire crises.

The Nobel prize-winning immunologist Peter Doherty and the epidemiologist and former Australian of the Year Fiona Stanley are among 180 professionals who have warned the government that Australia’s “failing” environmental laws will fuel further public health crises.

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UK approval for biggest gas power station in Europe ruled legal

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High court rejects challenge after ministers overruled climate objections of planning officials

The UK government’s approval of a large new gas-fired power plant has been ruled legal by the high court. A legal challenge was brought after ministers overruled climate change objections from planning authorities.

The plant, which is being developed by Drax in North Yorkshire, would be the biggest gas power station in Europe, and could account for 75% of the UK’s power sector emissions when fully operational, according to lawyers for ClientEarth, which brought the judicial review.

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Albanese demands Michael McCormack apology for ‘hair on fire’ climate change quip

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Labor leader says deputy PM’s comment about activism is ‘entirely inappropriate’ after recent bushfires

Anthony Albanese has demanded the deputy prime minister and Nationals leader, Michael McCormack, apologise for observing that a lot of people “set their hair on fire” about climate change, given the recent experience of the catastrophic summer of bushfires.

The Labor leader said McCormack’s comment on Friday was “entirely inappropriate” given the government had conceded that climate change was one of the factors in the fires “that saw thousands of homes lost, that saw millions of hectares burnt, and that had a devastating impact on the communities of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia”.

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Young climate activists call for EU to radically reform farming sector

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Fridays for Future to publish letter urging reform of common agricultural policy ahead of European commission meeting

The EU’s farming sector needs radical reform, and the common agricultural policy (CAP) must be rewritten if the climate crisis is to be tackled, a group of young climate activists will urge.

Fridays for Future, founded by teenagers in the wake of Greta Thunberg’s school strikes, will confront the European commission’s vice-president, Frans Timmermans, online to call for new plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, and replace subsidies based on the amount of land farmed with payments for farmers supplying public goods, such as clean water, clean air and lower carbon emissions.

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Antarctica: tiny algae turning snow green ‘could create new ecosystem’ – video

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Antarctica is  turning green due to the climate crisis and the phenomenon is potentially offering sustenance to other species, according to the first large-scale algae map of the peninsular by University of Cambridge scientists.

The map identifies 1,679 separate blooms of green snow algae, which together cover an area of 1.9 sq km, equating to a carbon sink of about 479 tonnes a year. This is equivalent to the emissions of about 875,000 petrol car journeys in the UK, though in global terms it is too small to make much of a difference to the planet’s carbon budget

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Climate change is turning parts of Antarctica green, say scientists

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Researchers map ‘beginning of new ecosystem’ as algae bloom across surface of melting snow

Scientists have created the first large-scale map of microscopic algae on the Antarctic peninsula as they bloom across the surface of the melting snow, tinting the surface green and potentially creating a source of nutrition for other species.

The British team behind the research believe these blooms will expand their range in the future because global heating is creating more of the slushy conditions they need to thrive.

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Dust bowl conditions of 1930s US now more than twice as likely to reoccur

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Climate breakdown means conditions that wrought devastation across Great Plains could return to region

The agricultural conditions known as a “dust bowl”, which helped propel mass migration among drought-stricken farmers in the US during the great depression of the 1930s, are now more than twice as likely to reoccur in the region, because of climate breakdown, new research has found.

Dust bowl conditions in the 1930s wrought devastation across the US agricultural heartlands of the Great Plains, which run through the middle of the continental US stretching from Montana to Texas. The conditions are caused by a combination of heatwaves, drought and farming practices, replacing the native prairie vegetation.

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Is the Covid-19 crisis the catalyst for greening the world’s airlines?

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Aviation is struggling and seeking support, but there are demands for it to give something in return

“The political moment is now” to address the climate risks posed by the aviation industry, analysts, insiders and campaigners say, as governments across the world weigh up bailouts for airlines grounded by the coronavirus pandemic.

Rescue packages need to come with green strings, such as reduced carbon footprints and frequent flyer levies, they warn, or the sector will return to the path that has made it the fastest rising source of climate-wrecking carbon emissions over the past decade.

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Carmakers press for EU and UK subsidies after slump in demand

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Green campaigners say giving subsidies to all cars would be missed opportunity

Carmakers are negotiating with the EU and UK for subsidies to help boost demand for new vehicles, but campaigners are concerned that the stimulus could end up paying for pollution unless emissions restrictions are imposed.

The carmakers argue that subsidies would help kickstart demand as lockdown measures ease and factories reopen, preventing tens of thousands of job losses amid a global slump in car orders.

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Malnutrition leading cause of death and ill health worldwide – report

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Coronavirus highlights weakness of food and health systems, as Global Nutrition Report finds one in nine of world’s population is hungry

An overhaul of the world’s food and health systems is needed to tackle malnutrition, a “threat multiplier” that is now the leading cause of ill health and deaths globally, according to new analysis.

The Global Nutrition Report 2020 found that most people across the world cannot access or afford healthy food, due to agricultural systems that favour calories over nutrition as well as the ubiquity and low cost of highly processed foods. Inequalities exist across and within countries, it says.

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Greta Thunberg and children’s group hit back at attempt to throw out climate case

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Brazil, France and Germany say UN can’t hear complaint against five countries of flouting child rights to clean air

Greta Thunberg and a group of other children have pushed forward their legal complaint at the UN against countries they accuse of endangering children’s wellbeing through the climate crisis, despite attempts to have it thrown out.

The 16 children, including the Swedish environmental activist, lodged a legal case with the UN committee on the rights of the child against Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey last September.

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One billion people will live in insufferable heat within 50 years – study

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Human cost of climate crisis will hit harder and sooner than previously believed, research reveals

The human cost of the climate crisis will hit harder, wider and sooner than previously believed, according to a study that shows a billion people will either be displaced or forced to endure insufferable heat for every additional 1C rise in the global temperature.

In a worst-case scenario of accelerating emissions, areas currently home to a third of the world’s population will be as hot as the hottest parts of the Sahara within 50 years, the paper warns. Even in the most optimistic outlook, 1.2 billion people will fall outside the comfortable “climate niche” in which humans have thrived for at least 6,000 years.

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Link climate pledges to €26bn airline bailout, say Europe’s greens

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Environment groups insist conditions must be attached to Covid-19 rescue plan for sector

Airlines are seeking €26bn (£22.7bn) in state aid to deal with the economic fallout from coronavirus, according to environmental campaigners, who accuse governments of failing to attach binding climate conditions to negotiations.

My flight to Europe is cancelled. All I’m being offered is an alternative flight or vouchers. Is this legal?

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Climate experts call for ‘dangerous’ Michael Moore film to be taken down

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Planet of the Humans, which takes aim at the green movement, is ‘full of misinformation’, says one online library

A new Michael Moore-produced documentary that takes aim at the supposed hypocrisy of the green movement is “dangerous, misleading and destructive” and should be removed from public viewing, according to an assortment of climate scientists and environmental campaigners.

The film, Planet of the Humans, was released on the eve of Earth Day last week by its producer, Michael Moore, the baseball cap-wearing documentarian known for Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine. Describing itself as a “full-frontal assault on our sacred cows”, the film argues that electric cars and solar energy are unreliable and rely upon fossil fuels to function. It also attacks figures including Al Gore for bolstering corporations that push flawed technologies over real solutions to the climate crisis.

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Meteorologists say 2020 on course to be hottest year since records began

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Global lockdowns have lowered emissions but longer-term changes needed, say scientists

This year is on course to be the world’s hottest since measurements began, according to meteorologists, who estimate there is a 50% to 75% chance that 2020 will break the record set four years ago.

Although the coronavirus lockdown has temporarily cleared the skies, it has done nothing to cool the climate, which needs deeper, longer-term measures, the scientists say.

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Insect numbers down 25% since 1990, global study finds

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Scientists say insects are vital and the losses worrying, with accelerating declines in Europe called ‘shocking’

The biggest assessment of global insect abundances to date shows a worrying drop of almost 25% in the last 30 years, with accelerating declines in Europe that shocked scientists.

The analysis combined 166 long-term surveys from almost 1,700 sites and found that some species were bucking the overall downward trend. In particular, freshwater insects have been increasing by 11% each decade following action to clean up polluted rivers and lakes. However, this group represent only about 10% of insect species and do not pollinate crops.

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The Covid-19 crisis creates a chance to reset economies on a sustainable footing | James Shaw

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New Zealand climate minister says governments must not just return to the way things were, and instead plot a new course to ease climate change

James Shaw, New Zealand’s climate change minister, has asked the country’s independent climate change commission to check whether its emissions targets under the Paris agreement are enough to limit global heating to 1.5C. He explains why he’s prioritising the issue during a strict national lockdown to stop the spread of Covid-19, which could send New Zealand’s unemployment rate soaring.

To say that we find ourselves in an unprecedented moment is so obvious and has been so often repeated it’s almost become white noise. What is less obvious, however, is where we go from here.

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Earth Day: Greta Thunberg calls for ‘new path’ after pandemic

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Climate activist says Covid-19 outbreak shows change can happen when we listen to scientists

Greta Thunberg has urged people around the world to take a new path after the coronavirus pandemic, which she said proved “our society is not sustainable”.

The Swedish climate activist said the strong global response to Covid-19 demonstrated how quickly change could happen when humanity came together and acted on the advice of scientists.

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