By Brad Plumer  and  Mira Rojanasakul , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Countries have made scant progress in curbing their greenhouse gas emissions over the past year, keeping the planet on track for dangerous levels of warming this century,  according to a new report  published Thursday. The report by the Climate Action Tracker, a research group, estimates that the climate and energy policies currently pursued by governments around the world would cause global temperatures to rise roughly 2.7 degrees Celsius, or 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by 2100. That estimate of future warming has barely budged for three years now, the group said. ...The study was issued during the United Nations climate summit [COP29] in Baku, Azerbaijan....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/climate/climate-action-tracker-temperatures-emissions.html . 

By Ron Barrett , Professor of Anthropology, Macalester College.  Excerpt: Strange as it may seem, early germ theorists could tell us a lot about today’s attitudes toward climate change. While researching for a new book about the  history of emerging infections , I found many similarities between early debates over the existence of microbes and current debates over the existence of global warming. Both controversies reveal the struggles of perceiving an unseen threat. Both reveal the influence of economic interests that benefit from the status quo. But most importantly, both reveal how people with different beliefs and interests can still agree on key policies and practices for tackling a global problem....  Full article at https://theconversation.com/can-humanity-address-climate-change-without-believing-it-medical-history-suggests-it-is-possible-230936 . 

By Grace van Deelen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Attribution science aims to determine the extent to which climate change causes natural hazards and extreme weather such as hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and heat waves. But how comfortable is the public in making these connections? Pretty comfortable, as it turns out. A  new study  published in  Climatic Change  shows that 83% of Americans have some confidence in attributing at least one type of extreme weather to climate change. However, the public’s views varied among hazards and didn’t always line up with scientists’ confidence. The results point out some important considerations for climate scientists looking to communicate their work to the public. ...The public’s confidence in attributing events aligned with climate scientists’ understanding of how extreme weather and climate change are linked about 40% of the time, according to the researchers. The scientists’ views came from a 2016 report from the  Nat...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-never-too-late-to-take-climate-action/ By JAMES K. BOYCE , Scientific American.  Excerpt: It’s official: this February was the  hottest one  on record. You may have noticed something odd when you stepped outside your door and winter was missing. It turns out the  weather weirdness was worldwide . In case you missed it, this comes on top of the news that  January  was the hottest ever, too, and that 2023 was the  hottest year  we’ve experienced so far. Again and again, climate activists have warned that we have only so much time left to head off catastrophe. Soon, we are told, it will be “ too late ” to save the planet and ourselves. Their message rests on the assumption that fear is the most potent spur to action. This communication strategy is deeply flawed. Politically, it leads many to  despair  that all is lost. When the climate apocalypse fails to arrive on schedule, it leads others to ...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/31/emissions-divide-now-greater-within-countries-than-between-them-study By Fiona Harvey , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The difference between the carbon emissions of the rich and the poor within a country is now greater than the differences in emissions between countries, data shows. The finding is further evidence of the  growing divide between the “polluting elite” of rich people  around the world, and the relatively low responsibility for emissions among the rest of the population. It also shows there is plenty of room for the poorest in the world to increase their greenhouse gas emissions if needed to reach prosperity, if rich people globally – including some in developing countries – reduce theirs, the analysis has found. ... a growing body of work suggests that a “polluting elite” of those on the highest incomes globally  are vastly outweighing the emissions of the poor. ... rich people in developing countries have m...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/opinion/environment/biden-gina-mccarthy-climate.html New York Times opinion piece by Gina McCarthy, departing national climate adviser and a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.  Excerpt: This week, as the world’s leaders gather in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, the United States will deliver a message many thought was not possible: We are going to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, and zero them out by 2050. Over the past 20 months as America’s first-ever national climate adviser, I have witnessed a paradigm shift: The private sector no longer sees climate action as a source of job losses, but rather as an opportunity for job creation and economic revitalization. It’s a striking shift after four years of the Trump administration, which threw science out the window and backed out of the Paris climate agreement. In 2020 the future seemed grim. But today, states and companies are running toward a clean ene...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32412-y By  Gregg Sparkman ,  Nathan Geiger  &  Elke U. Weber ,  Nature Communications .  Excerpt: ...Systematic misperception of public opinion ...like a widespread underestimation of public support for climate action could inhibit willingness to talk about the problem with others..., and could lead people to falsely conclude that the vocal minority who dismiss climate change are representative of broader public opinion.... Further, given that most Americans report concern about climate change and support many policies to address the issue..., why has the US not yet enacted major climate policy to address the issue? If most Americans were unaware of the popularity of their pro-climate action views, this could encourage inaction through pressures to conform to the (mis)perceived political attitudes of others, a phenomenon robust across the political spectrum.... These concerning possibilities raise the question...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/climate/biden-emissions-target-economy.html Source:  By  Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Hitting the targets could require a rapid shift to electric vehicles, the expansion of forests nationwide, development of complex new carbon-capture technology and many other changes, researchers said....  

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/climate/wood-pellet-industry-climate.html Source:  By Gabriel Popkin, The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...a huge factory that dries and presses wood into roughly cigarette-filter-sized pellets roared to life.... The slumberless factory’s output is trucked to a port in Chesapeake, Va., and loaded on ships bound for Europe, where it will be burned to produce electricity and heat for millions of people. It’s part of a fast-growing industry that, depending on whom you ask, is an unwelcome source of pollution or a much-needed creator of rural jobs; a forest protector, or a destroyer. In barely a decade, the Southeast’s wood pellet industry has grown from almost nothing to 23 mills with capacity to produce more than 10 million metric tons annually for export. It employs more than 1,000 people directly, and has boosted local logging and trucking businesses. ...The open question is whether a world increasingly desperate to avert climate disaster will...

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/04/young-people-moment-climate-crisis-became-real/ Source:  By Mary Retta, Mother Jones.  Excerpt: ...originally ... in  Teen Vogue …. Watching An Inconvenient Truth in your middle-school science class. Hearing  Greta Thunberg ’s calls to join weekly school strikes. Driving away from smoldering wildfires engulfing dry California hillsides. These are some of the moments that made young people realize the climate crisis will define their lives—and the future of human life on Earth. We’ve heard the facts so many times that it’s easy to become numb to them: The world is  steadily growing warmer , certain parts of the world are facing  extreme droughts or floods , many  wildlife populations are shrinking —and things are only projected to grow worse, with  carbon emissions rising  and countries  contributing to mass deforestation . Despite these emergencies,  many politicians , including Arka...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/12/02/un-climate-report-2020-warmest-year Source:  By  Andrew Freedman , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: This year will be one of the three hottest on record for the globe, as marine heat waves swelled over 80 percent of the world’s oceans, and triple-digit heat invaded Siberia, one of the planet’s coldest places. These troubling indicators of global warming are laid out in a  U.N. State of the Climate report  published Wednesday.... 

ttps://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/11/23/kerry-climate-change/ Source:  By   Brady Dennis ,   Steven Mufson   and     Juliet Eilperin , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: ‘America will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent national security threat it is,’ Kerry tweeted after the announcement....    

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/climate/fti-consulting.html Source:  By   Hiroko Tabuchi , The New York Times.  Excerpt: In early 2017, the Texans for Natural Gas website went live to urge voters to “thank a roughneck” and support fracking. Around the same time, the Arctic Energy Center ramped up its advocacy for drilling in Alaskan waters and in a vast Arctic wildlife refuge. The next year, the Main Street Investors Coalition warned that climate activism doesn’t help mom-and-pop investors in the stock market. All three appeared to be separate efforts to amplify local voices or speak up for regular people. On closer look, however, the groups had something in common: They were part of a network of corporate influence campaigns designed, staffed and at times run by FTI Consulting, which had been hired by some of the largest oil and gas companies in the world to help them promote fossil fuels... .  

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/climate/climate-change-future.html Source:  By  John Branch  and  Brad Plumer , The New York Times. Excerpt: America is now under siege by climate change in ways that scientists have warned about for years. But there is a second part to their admonition: Decades of growing crisis are already locked into the global ecosystem and cannot be reversed. This means the kinds of cascading disasters occurring today — drought in the West fueling  historic wildfires  that send smoke all the way to the East Coast, or parades of  tropical storms lining up  across the Atlantic to march destructively toward North America — are no longer features of some dystopian future. They are the here and now, worsening for the next generation and perhaps longer, depending on humanity’s willingness to take action.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/business/auto-industry-pandemic.html Source:   By Jack Ewing, The New York Times. Excerpt: Some automakers may emerge stronger, others too weak to survive on their own. Factories will shut down. The pressure to go electric could become more intense. People may travel less now that they have discovered how much they can get done from home. Or they may commute more by car to avoid jostling with others on crowded buses and trains. ... Sales of electric cars have been surprisingly resilient even as lockdowns gutted sales of gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. In March, as much of Europe went into lockdown, car sales on the continent fell by more than half. But registrations of battery-powered cars surged 23 percent, according to Matthias Schmidt, an analyst in Berlin who tracks the industry. In April, lockdowns caught up with electric cars, too, and their sales fell 31 percent, according to Mr. Schmidt’s estimate. But that was nothing compared w...

https://eos.org/articles/eight-lessons-from-covid-19-to-guide-our-climate-response Source:   By Kimberly M. S. Cartier, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: The global response to the ongoing pandemic can teach us how we should, and shouldn’t, respond to the climate crisis. And most important, it shows that we can do something....

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/prominent-us-climate-denial-group-fires-president-amid-financial-crisis Source:   By Scott Waldman, E&E News. Excerpt: The Heartland Institute is undergoing its second leadership change in less than a year. The group, which rejects climate science, is ousting its president, Frank Lasée, after being buffeted by financial turbulence that led to significant layoffs, according to two sources close to Heartland....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/climate/blackrock-oil-sands-alberta-financing.html Source:   By Christopher Flavelle, The New York Times. Excerpt: Some of the world’s largest financial institutions have stopped putting their money behind oil production in the Canadian province of Alberta, home to one of the world’s most extensive, and also dirtiest, oil reserves. In December, the insurance giant The Hartford said it would stop insuring or investing in oil production in the province, just weeks after Sweden’s central bank said it would stop holding Alberta’s bonds. And on Wednesday BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, said that one of its fast-growing green-oriented funds would stop investing in companies that get revenue from the Alberta oil sands. They are among the latest banks, pension funds and global investment houses  to start pulling away from fossil-fuel investments amid growing pressure to show they are doing something to fight climate change....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/business/media/guardian-climate-change-fossil-fuel-advertisements.html Source:     By Amie Tsang and Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: It said the decision was based on the efforts by the industry to prevent meaningful climate action by governments....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/climate/greta-thunberg-davos-transcript.html Source:    The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...full transcript of her remarks...