5/9/2025
Two-thirds of global warming caused by world’s richest 10%, study finds
The wealthiest 10 percent of the world’s people are responsible for two-thirds of the global warming since 1990, according to researchers. The way in which the rich consume and invest has substantially increased the risk of heatwaves and droughts, wrote the researchers of a study published on Wednesday in the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Climate Change. This is the first study to quantify the impact of concentrated private wealth on extreme climate events. “We link the carbon footprints of the wealthiest individuals directly to real-world climate impacts,” lead author Sarah Schoengart, a scientist at the public university of ETH Zurich, told the AFP news agency. “It’s a shift from carbon accounting toward climate accountability.” Compared with the global average, for example, the richest 1 percent contributed 26 times more to once-a-century heatwaves and 17 times more to droughts in the Amazon, according to the study. Emissions from the wealthiest 10 percent in China and the United States – which together account for nearly half of global carbon pollution – each led to a two- to threefold rise in heat extremes.
5/5/2025
Scientific societies to do climate assessment after Trump administration dismissed authors
Two major US scientific societies have announced they will join forces to produce peer-reviewed research on the climate crisis’s impact days after Donald Trump’s administration dismissed contributors to a key Congress-mandated report on climate crisis preparedness. On Friday, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) said that they will work together to produce over 29 peer-reviewed journals that will cover all aspects of climate change including observations, projections, impacts, risks and solutions. The collaboration comes just days after Trump’s administration dismissed all contributors to the sixth National Climate Assessment, the US government’s flagship study on climate change. The dismissal of nearly 400 contributors had left the future of the study in question; it had been scheduled for publication in 2028. The NCA had been overseen by the Nasa-supported Global Change Research Program – a key US climate body which the Trump administration also dismissed last month. The reports, which have been published since 2000, coordinated input from 14 federal agencies and hundreds of external scientists.
4/29/2025
White House dismisses authors of major climate report
The Trump Administration has dismissed the scientists working on the country’s flagship climate report, a move that threatens to curtail climate science and make information about global warming less available to the public. The National Climate Assessment is the most trustworthy and comprehensive source of information about how global warming affects the United States. It answers common questions about how quickly sea levels are rising near American cities, how much rain is normal for different regions and how to deal with wildfire smoke exposure. The assessment is mandated by Congress, and its sixth edition was supposed to be released in late 2027. About 400 volunteer authors had already started work. They included top scientists as well as economists, tribal leaders and climate experts from non-profit groups and corporations.
4/25/2025
Many decarbonization advocates have warned that President Trump’s freezes on Inflation Reduction Act spending and other governmental grants for clean energy development may not be temporary impediments but could dramatically derail sustainability initiatives across the commercial and industrial energy transition. One recent stat indicates that they may be right, although some of the cancelled deals involved companies that were already on the way out. Environmental policy non-profit group E2, which tracks clean energy project investment, has released a new tracking report warning that nearly $8 billion in planned projects were cancelled in the first quarter of 2025. Some of the withdrawal of clean energy investments was likely due to uncertainty over tax credits and incentives and was triple the financial impact of cancelled projects over the previous 30 months, according to E2. Some good news: About $1.6 billion in new solar, electric-vehicle infrastructure and transmission equipment factors were announced last month alone. Those include plans by Tesla to invest $200 million in a battery manufacturing factory near Houston.
3/30/2025
Earth losing fresh water and may have hit irreversible tipping point due to climate change
The Earth is getting drier and may have hit a tipping point for how much water is stored in soil because of climate change. So great is the decline in soil moisture that it has outpaced Greenland’s melting ice sheets in its contribution to sea level rise and changes to the wobble in Earth’s rotation. That’s according to a new study in the journal Science, which suggests more than 2,614 gigatonnes of moisture was lost from our planet between 2000 to 2016. It’s a trend that scientists think led to a major shift in land-based water storage — sources like groundwater, rivers, lakes, soil moisture and ice — from 1992. The researchers estimated between 2000 to 2002, soil moisture loss was about 1,614 Gt, equivalent to a 1.95 millimetre per year rise in sea level. That’s compared to a 900 Gt loss of ice in Greenland from 2002 to 2006, which contributes to about 0.8mm of sea level rise annually. Global soil moisture levels have not recovered, and a further 1,009 Gt was lost from 2003 to 2016.
3/20/2025
Last decade was Earth’s hottest ever as CO2 levels reach an 800,000-year high, says UN report
Last year was the hottest year on record, the top 10 hottest years were all in the past decade and planet-heating carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are at an 800,000-year high, a report Wednesday said. In its annual State of the Climate report, the World Meteorological Organization laid bare all the markings of an increasingly warming world with oceans at record high temperatures, sea levels rising and glaciers retreating at record speed. “Our planet is issuing more distress signals,” said António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General. He noted that the report says the international goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.8 Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times is still possible. “Leaders must step up to make it happen — seizing the benefits of cheap, clean renewables for their people and economies,” he said. The report attributed the heating to human activity — like the burning of coal, oil and gas — and in a smaller part to the naturally occurring El Nino weather phenomenon. An El Nino formed in June 2023 and dissipated a year later, adding extra heat and helping topple temperature records. In 2024, the world surpassed the 1.5 C limit for the first time — but just for a single year. Scientists measure breaching the climate goal as Earth staying above that level of warming over a longer time period.
2/19/2025
Nuclear fusion reactor sets a new world record – taking us closer towards limitless clean energy
A world record for nuclear fusion has been smashed after an ‘artificial sun’ reactor was able to maintain a plasma for more than 22 minutes. The WEST reactor, in southern France, is at the forefront of efforts to produce huge amounts of energy from the nuclear reaction when two atoms fuse. But, to have a hope of powering the world’s homes in the future, the reaction needs to be long-lasting in order to keep churning out energy. Now, by smashing the 20-minute mark, the WEST reactor has taken a stride towards running for longer – one of the three ‘golden conditions’ to achieve nuclear fusion. Plasma is created when the two fuels used in the reactor, deuterium and tritium, are heated to more than 50 million degrees Celsius. It is the ‘fourth state’ after a material goes through the stages of solid, liquid and gas, and it takes the super-hot centre of a special reactor to achieve it. Plasma must be maintained within the reactor chamber, without it dispersing, cooling and returning to gas form. The WEST reactor prevents plasma from escaping by using magnetic fields to confine it in one place.
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