Climate

On the Moral Hazards of Carbon Dioxide Removal
Climate change science involves a lot of math. There's a great deal of calculus, plus all those formulas and models to understand how planetary physics works. But some of the most important climate math is no more complicated than basic arithmetic. Take the remaining "carbon budget" we have to avoid catastrophic environmental changes, divide that by the volume of carbon pollution industrial society pumps into the atmosphere daily, and you get the amount of time we have left. It's not a big number. Seven years and change.
By lupu alexandra3 years ago in Earth
How Best to Protect the Night Sky?
Bill Wren fell in love with the stars in the inky-black skies of central Missouri. In his childhood backyard, he tinkered with his binoculars, gazing at the craters and mountains of the moon. Then, at age 15, Wren moved with his family to Houston. It was a jarring experience—when he looked up at night, he could no longer see the stars. Though he didn't yet have a name for it, this was his introduction to the growing problem of light pollution. Today, one-third of humanity—including 80 percent of Americans—can no longer see the Milky Way.To avoid the bright city lights, Wren would flee whenever he could, driving nearly an hour and a half northwest of Houston, astronomy books and telescope in tow. He began to understand the value of observing a truly dark sky. "It's almost a mystical experience, that sense of being connected, the sense of unity and oneness," Wren says. His early obsession would grow into a lifelong effort to preserve dark skies and one day earn him the moniker the Angel of Darkness.
By lupu alexandra3 years ago in Earth
Do You Know Where Your Water Comes From?
It wasn’t until she was 26 and had one degree in environmental science and another in water recycling that Nina Gordon-Kirsch learned where the water in her faucet came from. The Mokelumne River, which carries snowmelt from the Sierra through the Central Valley and out to the San Francisco Bay delta, is surprisingly little-known considering how many lives depend on it.
By lupu alexandra3 years ago in Earth
10 Tips for Your First Time Camping in Winter
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness?” wrote John Steinbeck. Point taken, but there’s also a certain sweetness to the cold of winter. Cold-weather camping is a great way to savor those tranquil moments and settings only winter can provide—untouched snow-covered landscapes, early nights and early mornings, a warm fire—yet even some experienced campers balk at the prospect.
By lupu alexandra3 years ago in Earth
Climate activists make their presence known at COP26
The international COP26 climate conference, seen by many as the last chance to establish a climate agenda that will curb global temperature rise, is more than halfway over. Only a few days remain for the world’s most prominent political, economic, and environmental leaders to commit to transitioning the world away from fossil fuels.
By lupu alexandra3 years ago in Earth
This Is the Decade to Reduce Emissions
As the sun rose in Glasgow, over 20,000 people—delegates from individual nations, representatives of nongovernmental organizations, and activists—gathered in Scotland for the start of the United Nations’ two-week climate conference. Known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP26, it runs from Monday, November 1, to Friday, November 12, 2021.
By lupu alexandra3 years ago in Earth
Plastic Is the New Coal, Says New Report
Your plastic water bottle will likely spend its golden years floating around the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but its life began thousands of feet underground. How it got from there to you—and why it was made in the first place—has big implications for global climate goals.
By lupu alexandra3 years ago in Earth
COP26: Voices From the Global South Talk Money
Aside from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, funding is a key issue at the annual United Nations climate negotiations. Money from developed nations given to developing nations is vital to fund mitigation and adaptation efforts; that is, to lessen the impacts of climate change and to protect against its future effects.
By lupu alexandra3 years ago in Earth
Facing Intransigence From Manchin, Environmentalists Look for Ways to Slash Carbon Pollution
Last week, Senator Joe Manchin, the Democrat from West Virginia who has made a personal fortune from his fossil fuel investments, pulled the rug out from underneath Democrats’ climate agenda. The senator said he would not vote for the Clean Energy Performance Program, or CEPP, the flagship climate policy of the Build Back Better legislation that would require power companies to rapidly replace fossil fuels with renewables such as solar and wind.
By lupu alexandra3 years ago in Earth
What Does Cloture Have to Do With Climate Change?
The FY2022 federal budget contains some of the most important climate policy of our lives. Some of it isn’t specifically about climate but will nonetheless have huge impacts on emissions. The construction of affordable housing in the nation’s increasingly unaffordable cities, for example, will help low-income people who are most likely to have old cars with terrible emissions drive less—or not at all. Making existing affordable housing more energy efficient is sound climate policy as well as an anti-poverty measure. Other aspects of the budget, like the maybe-it’s-dead-and-maybe-it-isn’t Clean Energy Performance Program (CEPP), are clearly aimed at cutting fossil fuel emissions (more on that below). All of these proposals have been designed to fit into a reconciliation bill—an arcane, complicated form of budgeting that Congress resorts to when all is not harmonious in the halls of government.
By lupu alexandra3 years ago in Earth
Heeding the Pandemic’s Warnings
When Katey Hedger walked into the Satria Bird Market in Bali in March 2021, the first thing to hit her was the smell. “There were droppings everywhere, all over the floor, and the floor was wet,” Hedger says. “I tried my best not to touch anything.”
By lupu alexandra3 years ago in Earth
We Don't Deserve Beavers
Tar Creek doesn’t seem like an inviting home for wildlife. For more than 70 years, miners blasted open the earth underneath the Oklahoma waterway in search of lead and zinc. Today, mountains of waste material from the mines tower above what is now classified by the EPA as a Superfund site. Groundwater that flows through the abandoned mines flushes toxic heavy metals, including cadmium and lead—both potent neurotoxins even at low concentrations—into the creek. The water runs bright orange.
By lupu alexandra3 years ago in Earth