Boston Globe (June 7)
“There are now twice as many nights when temperatures don’t drop below 70 degrees” in Boston and the heat will get worse “even under best-case scenarios for global warming.” At the end of the last century, “from 1971-2000, Massachusetts logged an average of four days above 90 degrees” per year. Looking ahead, annual 90-degree scorchers are projected to range from 10 to 28 days by mid-century, before reaching 13 to 56 days by 2099.
Tags: 70 degrees, Best case, Boston, Global warming, Massachusetts, Nights, Scenarios, Temperatures, Worse
Financial Times (June 1)
“Shareholders have ramped up pressure on companies to tackle global warming even as businesses grapple with the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.” Their targets have included JPMorgan and Rio Tinto and through May 20, “climate change resolutions at annual meetings received average shareholder support of 23 per cent,” up from “16 per cent during all of 2019.”
Tags: Annual meetings, Climate change, Coronavirus, Global warming, JPMorgan, Pandemic, Pressure, Resolutions, Rio Tinto, Shareholders
LA Times (February 24)
“Baby steps by a handful of oil and gas companies aren’t going to do much to combat overall emissions. Similarly, the Trillion Trees Initiative…won’t do an awful lot, either. In fact, it’s one of those fig-leaf solutions that offers a pretense of significant action against global warming while ignoring the most pressing problem — the burning of fossil fuels in the first place.”
Tags: Baby steps, Emissions, Fig leaf, Gas, Global warming, Oil, Trillion Trees
Chicago Tribune (January 7)
“Australia burns as the planet bakes.” There’s no mystery why events like these have grown more common and more destructive,” but there’s still widespread inaction and occasionally denial of global warming. “If we want more of what Australia is suffering, doing more of the same is fine. If we hope to see a better future, we will have to take action to bring it about.”
Tags: Australia, Burns, Denial, Destructive, Future, Global warming, Inaction
Reuters (January 2)
“CEOs increasingly talk a good game on climate change, but the financial implications of global warming have played a small role in dealmaking so far. That will change in the year ahead.”
New York Times (December 29)
“Three decades after a top climate scientist warned Congress of the dangers of global warming, greenhouse gas emissions keep rising and so do global temperatures.” We are “going nowhere fast on climate, year after year.”
Tags: Climate, Climate scientist, Congress, Dangers, Decades, Emissions Temperatures, Global warming, Greenhouse gas
Chicago Tribune (November 26)
“Global warming is a Midwest crisis in the making.” A just released federal climate change report predicts “sopping rains will damage crops, then heat waves will fry them. Humid conditions will spur the growth of pests and pathogens that will degrade the quality of stored corn or soybeans. Before mid-century… Midwest agricultural productivity will slip back to levels of the 1980s.”
Tags: Agriculture, Climate change, Corn, Crisis, Crops, Damage, Global warming, Heat waves, Midwest, Pathogens, Pests, Productivity, Rains, Soybeans
New York Times (August 31)
“Worldwide, insect pests consume up to 20 percent of the plants that humans grow for food, and that amount will increase as global warming makes bugs hungrier…. That could encourage farmers to use more pesticides, which could cause further environmental harm.”
Tags: Bugs, Environment, Farmers, Food, Global warming, Humans, Hungrier, Insects, Pesticides, Pests, Plants, Worldwide
The Economist (August 4)
“Earth is smouldering. From Seattle to Siberia this summer, flames have consumed swathes of the northern hemisphere.” And humanity is not rising to the challenge. Three years following the Paris Accord, “greenhouse-gas emissions are up again. So are investments in oil and gas. In 2017, for the first time in four years, demand for coal rose. Subsidies for renewables, such as wind and solar power, are dwindling.” While “it is tempting to think these are temporary setbacks and that mankind, with its instinct for self-preservation, will muddle through to a victory over global warming. In fact, it is losing the war.”
Tags: Coal, Demand, Earth, Emissions, Gas, GHG, Global warming, Humanity, Oil, Paris accord, Renewables, Self-preservation, Setbacks, Smouldering, Solar power, Wind
The Economist (July 28)
“No consequence of global warming is as self-evident as higher temperatures. Earth is roughly 1°C hotter today than it was before humanity started belching greenhouse gases into the atmosphere during the Industrial Revolution.” This summer the consequences are widespread: “Heat is causing problems across the world.” But if global warming continues, “the toll on human lives is hard to imagine.” The bright spot is that better government response appears to be saving some lives. “If only the world could take in a similar lesson about the importance of stopping climate change in the first place.”
Tags: Climate change, Consequences, Earth, GHG, Global warming, Government, Heat, Human lives, Industrial Revolution, Response, Temperatures
