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Climate
Cities are tackling growing heat – but they have to avoid a dangerous trap
With modern solutions such as air-con aggravating the problem, ancient heat-management techniques can offer answers
Beneath the streets of Seville – the city nicknamed “El Sartén”, the frying pan of Europe, where summer temperatures regularly top 40C – a €5m (about £4m ) cooling strategy is taking the city back in time.
The millennium-old Persian technique of “qanat” features underground channels filled with water and shafts that bring the cooler underground air to the surface. Seville is doing the same, adapting a 1992 experimental qanat to use renewable power and – in a new twist – pumping the water to the tops of buildings, where it will trickle down inside the walls to cool them. Even the benches will be chilled.
Continue reading...Survivors of climate disasters demand US inquiry into big oil’s ‘climate crimes’
More than 10,000 people sign letter to justice department for federal investigation into industry’s misinformation
Allen Myers grew up in Paradise, California, which for him is “sacred land”. At age 11, he sat beside his mother’s bedside as she passed away in his beloved family home. Years later, that house, along with 90% of the town, burned to the ground in the devastating 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 people.
Today, he is demanding the fossil fuel industry be held accountable for its role in that deadly blaze and other climate disasters. Myers and 1,000 survivors of climate disasters signed a letter delivered in person to the US Department of Justice on Thursday, demanding federal investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s “climate crimes”.
Continue reading...The Anchovy Renaissance Is Here
Liquefied natural gas pollution linked to 60 premature US deaths a year – report
LNG exports responsible for $957m in total annual US health costs, says new Greenpeace and Sierra Club report
The expansion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports is responsible for scores of premature deaths and nearly $1bn in annual health costs, according to a new report from the green groups Greenpeace and Sierra Club.
The report links air pollution from LNG export terminals to an estimated 60 premature deaths and $957m in total health costs each year, and found that if all planned and proposed terminals come online, those numbers would shoot up to 149 premature deaths and $2.33bn.
Continue reading...El calor extremo amenaza la educación en todo el mundo
Una solución disruptiva para salvar el canal de Panamá
Fallout from Woodside’s birthday bash shows Australia is far from united in climate fight | Temperature Check
WA newspaper throws tantrum and Tony Abbott blames ‘climate cult’ after prime minister misses fossil fuel company’s party
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If we are looking for something to illustrate Australia’s inability to have any coherent and sustained response to the climate crisis over the past couple of decades, we can find it in the reaction to the fossil fuel giant Woodside’s 70th birthday dinner.
That reaction being a little bit of climate science denial, plus some political patronage and big servings of fossil fuel cheerleading barely disguised as journalism.
Continue reading...The Owners of an Iowa Hog Farm Are Switching to Mushrooms
How Extreme Heat Is Threatening Education Progress Worldwide
Project 2025 promises billions of tonnes more carbon pollution – study
Experts say climate policies contained within rightwing manifesto would wreck US climate targets and cost jobs
The impact of Donald Trump enacting the climate policies of the rightwing Project 2025 would result in billions of tonnes of extra carbon pollution, wrecking the US’s climate targets, as well as wiping out clean energy investments and more than a million jobs, a new analysis finds.
Should Trump retake the White House and pass the energy and environmental policies in the controversial Project 2025 document, the US’s planet-heating emissions will “significantly increase” by 2.7bn tonnes above the current trajectory by 2030, an amount comparable to the entire annual emissions of India, according to the report.
Continue reading...Flaming out? Burning Man festival fails to sell out for first time in a decade
Rising cost of living and climate crisis have played spoilers to the celebration, which has sold out every year since 2011
For more than a decade, tickets to Burning Man have sold out almost immediately – sometimes in a matter of minutes.
But this year, less than two weeks before the festival kicks off, tickets are still available – raising questions about the future of the annual desert revelry in the face of the climate crisis and economic instability.
This article was amended on 14 August 2024. It previously stated that Burning Man has been held in Nevada’s Black Rock desert since 1986. The festival actually first began on a San Francisco beach in 1986.
Continue reading...Unprecedented number of heat records broken around world this year
Exclusive: In 2024, 15 national temperature records have been set as weather extremes grow more frequent, climate historian says
- How does today’s extreme heat compare with Earth’s past climate?
- ‘You feel like you’re suffocating’: Florida outdoor workers are collapsing in the heat without water and shade
A record 15 national heat records have been broken since the start of this year, an influential climate historian has told the Guardian, as weather extremes grow more frequent and climate breakdown intensifies.
An additional 130 monthly national temperature records have also been broken, along with tens of thousands of local highs registered at monitoring stations from the Arctic to the South Pacific, according to Maximiliano Herrera, who keeps an archive of extreme events.
Continue reading...How does today’s extreme heat compare with Earth’s past climate?
Viewed through a long enough lens, our climate can seem unremarkable – but for humans it is unprecedented
- Unprecedented number of heat records broken this year
- ‘You feel like you’re suffocating’: Florida outdoor workers are collapsing in the heat without water and shade
Climate records are tumbling at a galloping pace. The world has just experienced its hottest ever single day on record, amid a string of record-breaking months that followed the planet’s hottest recorded year. But how does this cascade of new highs in the era of modern record-keeping compare with the Earth’s deeper history?
Those who piece together what past climates were like in eras before thermometers and satellites – a practice known as palaeoclimatology – find that today’s temperatures are, when narrowly viewed, unremarkable. For example, the Eocene, an epoch lasting from 56m years to 34m years ago, was “screamingly hotter” than today, by about 10-15C, according to Matthew Huber, an expert in historical climates at Purdue University in the US.
Continue reading...‘You feel like you’re suffocating’: Florida outdoor workers are collapsing in the heat without water and shade
Florida has passed legislation banning local safety rules for outdoor workers, despite heat stress set to cost global economy $2.4tn by 2030
- Unprecedented number of heat records broken this year
- How does today’s extreme heat compare with Earth’s past climate?
It was a hot, muggy day in south Florida when Cristina Lopez sank to her knees, overcome by a wave of nausea and dizziness, as the sun beat down relentlessly on the plant nursery where the Guatemalan migrant works with three of her children.
Lopez was thirsty, overheating, and unable to continue lugging plant pots as the heat index topped 100F (38C). She could barely see straight, but employers are not required to give outdoor workers regular breaks or access to shade, and Lopez said she was reprimanded for taking a short rest.
Continue reading...An Indigenous Author Says the Past Holds Answers to Today’s Environmental Crises
To Save the Panama Canal From Drought, a Disruptive Fix
Commonwealth Bank to stop financing fossil fuel companies that don’t comply with Paris climate goals
Shareholders and customers of ANZ, Westpac and NAB are bound to demand their banks do the same, expert says
The Commonwealth Bank, Australia’s largest lender, has broken ranks with rivals and will stop financing fossil fuel companies that aren’t compliant with the Paris climate goals by the end of this year.
Clients failing to meet an emissions pathway consistent with keeping global temperature increases to the “well below 2C goal of the Paris agreement” would not receive “new corporate or trade finance, or bond facilitation with a maturity beyond 31 December 2024”, CBA said.
Continue reading...Police remove climate protesters from Parliament House in Canberra – video
Climate protesters were removed from Parliament House by police on Wednesday morning. In a statement, the protesters said they felt 'betrayed by the Albanese government’s abandonment of major reform to our environment laws earlier this year, following pressure from coal and gas companies'
Continue reading...Deadly Landslides in India Made Worse by Climate Change, Study Finds
Half a billion children live in areas with twice as many very hot days as in 1960s
Unicef analysis also finds children in eight countries spend more than half the year in temperatures above 35C
Almost half a billion children are growing up in parts of the world where there are at least twice the number of extremely hot days every year compared with six decades ago, analysis by Unicef has found.
The analysis by the UN’s children’s agency examined for the first time data on changes in children’s exposure to extreme heat over the past 60 years.
Continue reading...