Category Archives: Climate crisis

Climate crisis and neglect threaten Spain’s saffron crop

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Growers fear a perfect storm for a tradition that has long bound rural communities together

A sharp wind shunts clouds across the low and endless skies of La Mancha as Carlos Fernández stoops to pluck the last mauve flowers of the season from the cold earth. Their petals, which stain his index finger and thumb blue, enclose an almost weightless prize whose crimson threads are treasured in Spain and across the world.

But despite the prices his crop fetches, and the weighty comparisons those prices inevitably invite, the life of a saffron grower is not without its trials, travails and frustrations.

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Is it time to turn western Sydney into a city of fountains? It might help beat the heat

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A combination of water technologies and cool building materials are more effective at tackling urban heat than greenery, a study has found

The secret to more livable, cooler Australian cities may lie with the ancient Romans and a network of fountains like the Trevi and those in Piazza Navona, a new report on tackling urban heat has found.

Rome has a network of 2,000 fountains which draw huge crowds daily to enjoy their cooling effects in the dense city.

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Colombia announces halt on fossil fuel exploration for a greener economy

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The minister for mines, Irene Vélez, told world leaders the country will shift away from fossil fuels to begin a sustainable chapter

Colombia’s leftwing government has announced that it will not approve any new oil and gas exploration projects as it seeks to shift away from fossil fuels and toward a new sustainable economy.

Irene Vélez, the minister for mines told world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the time had come for the Andean nation to move away from its reliance on oil and gas and begin a new, greener chapter in the country’s history.

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Rishi Sunak criticised after third domestic RAF jet flight in 10 days

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Labour hits out at PM’s ‘recklessly expensive habits’ after latest flight to event in Lancashire

Rishi Sunak has been criticised for taking a domestic flight in an RAF jet for the third time in 10 days.

The prime minister flew on a 14-seat aircraft to an event in Lancashire to hold the first of what is due to be a series of events where he will take questions from the public.

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NSW environment watchdog to require big polluters to show how they will hit net zero and then nudge them to improve

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The state’s EPA is unveiling what it calls Australia’s ‘most comprehensive plan’ to cut carbon emissions

New South Wales’s environmental watchdog has released what it calls Australia’s “most comprehensive plan” to regulate carbon emissions, requiring firms to show how they will hit net zero by 2050 and nudging them to improve resilience in a warming world.

The Climate Change Policy and Action Plan 2023-26, released on Friday by the Environment Protection Authority, will identify what progress is already under way by companies now covered by pollution licences and encourage them to improve.

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News live updates: Australian leaders react to Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation; Queensland braces for severe storms

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Student debt cut for teachers who go rural; WA to ban display and possession of Nazi symbols. Follow the day’s news live

Growing impact of climate disasters on mental health revealed

In case you missed it, a new poll commissioned by the Climate Council shows that four in five Australians have experienced some form of natural disaster at least once since 2019.

This coal cap scheme will see NSW doing our part at the request of the Albanese government to contribute to the national solution of this national problem.

I know those currently providing coal for the local market will appreciate that companies enjoying super profits on the back of the war in Ukraine will now do their part for the domestic market.

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Town where Martin Luther King Jr made historic march reels from tornado

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Residents of Selma, Alabama, find resilience in civil rights leader’s legacy as US marks MLK Day

As the US marked Martin Luther King Jr Day on Monday, the town of Selma, Alabama, that hosted his historic 1965 march was still reeling from a tornado that destroyed buildings, swept away roofs and tossed around mobile homes.

Thursday’s twister in Selma was categorized as EF-2, indicating “significant”, and about 40 miles away in Autauga county, where it claimed seven lives – including four from the same family – it was EF-3 or “severe”.

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Climate activists vow to take to streets to stop fossil fuel extraction

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‘Cease and desist’ letter signed by over 650,000 people sent to oil and gas CEOs follows removal of Greta Thunberg from coal protest

Hundreds of thousands of young climate activists have said they will continue “protesting in the streets in huge numbers” against fossil fuels, a day after Greta Thunberg was removed by German police from a condemned village atop a massive coal deposit.

In a cease-and-desist letter to the CEOs of fossil fuel companies, youth campaigners accuse them of a “direct violation of our human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, your duties of care, as well as the rights of Indigenous people”.

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Davos’s elite will need to do some soul-searching in a world falling apart

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The first proper World Economic Forum for three years will take place against a humbling backdrop of crisis and conflict

The war in Ukraine. A rapidly slowing economy, fragmentation and de-globalisation. The rising cost of living. Climate change. There is plenty for the global great and good to get their teeth into this week as Davos resumes after a three-year hiatus.

Strictly speaking, it not the first gathering of world leaders, businesspeople, academics and civil society since the start of the pandemic, but last May’s World Economic Forum event was a slimmed-down and not especially well-attended affair. As a dry run it was fine, but a real Davos traditionally happens in January, when the snow is thick on the ground in the Swiss village 1,500 metres up in the Alps. In the past, the mood at Davos has oscillated between extreme optimism and unbridled gloom, depending on the state of the world economy. This year it looks certain to be the latter. As Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chair of the WEF put it last week, “economic, environmental, social and geopolitical crises are converging and conflating”. The aim of this year’s Davos, he added, was to get rid of the “crisis mindset”.

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Revealed: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

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Oil company drove some of the leading science of the era only to publicly dismiss global heating

The oil giant Exxon privately “predicted global warming correctly and skilfully” only to then spend decades publicly rubbishing such science in order to protect its core business, new research has found.

A trove of internal documents and research papers has previously established that Exxon knew of the dangers of global heating from at least the 1970s, with other oil industry bodies knowing of the risk even earlier, from around the 1950s. They forcefully and successfully mobilized against the science to stymie any action to reduce fossil fuel use.

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UAE to launch Cop28 presidency with oil boss tipped for leading role

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Sultan Al Jaber, chief of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, expected to be named president of global climate talks

The United Arab Emirates will launch its presidency of global climate talks on Thursday, with the head of its national oil company likely to be given the leading role.

Sultan Al Jaber has served as climate envoy to the country, and is chief of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), the world’s twelfth-largest oil company by production, and is hotly tipped to take on the pivotal role of president of the talks.

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Banks and countries pledge $10bn to rebuild Pakistan after catastrophic floods

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International funders join Pakistan PM and UN secretary general in Geneva to agree recovery plan following ‘monsoon on steroids’

The international community has promised $10.5bn (£8.77bn) to help Pakistan rebuild after last summer’s catastrophic floods, described by UN secretary general António Guterres as a “monsoon on steroids.”

The pledges were made on Monday at the International Conference on Climate Resilient Pakistan in Geneva, Switzerland, hosted by Pakistan’s prime minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif and Guterres.

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Concerns over use of ‘cheap and easy’ offsets – as it happened

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This blog is now closed

More than 80% of council areas declared disasters in the past four years, Watt says

Murray Watt was hesitant to attribute the individual disaster in the Kimberley to climate change, unlike his colleague Chris Bowen. But he said the overall pattern of increasing disasters was “undoubtedly climate change”:

I don’t think that you can point to one particular event and say it’s due to climate change, but there is no doubt that we are seeing before our eyes is climate change happening. We know from all the scientists that we’re going to be facing more of these intense events more frequently.

I was actually advised yesterday by our agency that just in the last 12 months we’ve seen 316 of Australia’s 537 council areas disaster-declared: that’s about 60% of the council areas in the country. And if you go back four years to the black summer, 438 council areas in Australia have been disaster-declared, which is over 80%.

A lot of people aren’t aware but the wet season in northern Western Australia … generally doesn’t begin until later this month. So their wettest months actually tend to be February and March rather than starting as early as January. So to have this amount of water come through the system this early in the wet season is a concern.

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Weather tracker: January temperatures smash records across Europe

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Abnormally high temperatures caused by orientation of high and low pressure, but also point to effects of climate change

Exceptionally high temperatures affected large parts of Europe last week, with longstanding records across the central and western regions broken in a number of locations. The abnormally high temperatures developed due to the orientation of high and low pressure across the continent, which helped push very mild air in from the south-west. Although the pressure pattern was not particularly unusual, the temperatures were unprecedented in many places, and scientists are certain that they would not have been achieved without the influence of human-induced climate change.

Temperatures peaked at 18.9C in Warsaw, Poland, on New Year’s Day, smashing the previous record set in 1993 for the month of January by an astonishing 5C. In Bilbao, Spain, 25.1C was recorded, more than 10C above the seasonal average, which is typically around 14C.

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Half of glaciers will be gone by 2100 even under Paris 1.5C accord, study finds

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If global heating continues at current rate of 2.7C, losses will be greater with 68% of glaciers disappearing

Half the planet’s glaciers will have melted by 2100 even if humanity sticks to goals set out in the Paris climate agreement, according to research that finds the scale and impacts of glacial loss are greater than previously thought. At least half of that loss will happen in the next 30 years.

Researchers found 49% of glaciers would disappear under the most optimistic scenario of 1.5C of warming. However, if global heating continued under the current scenario of 2.7C of warming, losses would be more significant, with 68% of glaciers disappearing, according to the paper, published in Science. There would be almost no glaciers left in central Europe, western Canada and the US by the end of the next century if this happened.

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UK average annual temperature tops 10C for first time

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Mean temperature of 10.03C beats 2014’s 9.88C, confirming 2022 as country’s warmest on record

The UK’s annual average temperature topped 10C for the first time in 2022, as last year was confirmed as the country’s warmest on record.

The mean temperature across the 12 months was 10.03C, beating the previous all-time high of 9.88C in 2014, the Met Office said on Thursday.

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Record warm winter in parts of Europe forces closure of ski slopes

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Resorts open hiking trails and lifts for mountain bikes amid unseasonably high temperatures and lack of snow

Europe’s record-breaking warm winter weather has closed ski slopes and forced resorts to open summer trails or shut altogether, as grass and mud replace seasonal snow from Chamonix in France to Innsbruck in Austria.

Eight countries across the continent have recorded their warmest January day ever, with temperatures in parts of Switzerland and southern Germany exceeding 20C and 90 monitoring stations in France setting new records over new year.

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NSW forests could become net carbon emitters in coming decades, report finds

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Declining soil organic carbon could undermine state’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2050

Forests in New South Wales could become net carbon emitters in coming decades, undermining state government efforts to reach net zero emissions, according to a report by one of its own agencies.

The Natural Resources Commission has warned the Perrottet government the carbon benefits the state’s forests provide are degrading and will continue to degrade without “major intervention”.

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John Kerry: rich countries must respond to developing world anger over climate

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US climate envoy says there needs to be work on details of ‘loss and damage’ fund in 2023

People in developing countries are feeling increasingly angry and “victimised” by the climate crisis, the US climate envoy John Kerry has warned, and rich countries must respond urgently.

“I’ve been chronicling the increased frustration and anger of island states and vulnerable countries and small African nations and others around the world that feel victimised by the fact that they are a minuscule component of emissions,” he said. “And yet [they are] paying a very high price. Seventeen of the 20 most affected countries in the world, by the climate crisis, are in Africa, and yet 48 sub-Saharan countries total 0.55% of all emissions.”

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‘Extreme event’: warm January weather breaks records across Europe

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At least eight countries experience record high temperatures of ‘almost unheard of’ heat, say meteorologists

Weather records have been falling across Europe at a disconcerting rate in the last few days, say meteorologists.

The warmest January day ever was recorded in at least eight European countries including Poland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia, according to data collated by Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist who tracks extreme temperatures.

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