Tag: science scientists

Study: Greenhouse Emissions Are Messing With the Stratosphere

Mother Jones: Greenhouse Emissions Are Messing With the Stratosphere, a New Study Reveals. It raises the worrisome question of atmospheric effects yet to be discovered.

Humanity’s enormous emissions of greenhouse gases are shrinking the stratosphere, a new study has revealed.

The thickness of the atmospheric layer has contracted by 400 meters since the 1980s, the researchers found and will thin by about another kilometer by 2080 without major cuts in emissions. The changes have the potential to affect satellite operations, the GPS navigation system and radio communications.

The discovery is the latest to show the profound impact of humans on the planet. In April, scientists showed that the climate crisis had shifted the Earth’s axis as the massive melting of glaciers redistributes weight around the globe.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, reached its conclusions using the small set of satellite observations taken since the 1980s in combination with multiple climate models, which included the complex chemical interactions that occur in the atmosphere.

Yale Climate Connections, May 7, 2021

Articles include: ‘Which climate change jobs will be in high demand in the future?’;  Most newspaper editorials mum on Biden 50% by 2030 pledge; Revitalized U.S. urgency on climate change and national security;  Empire State Realty Trust agrees to buy 300 million kilowatt hours of wind energy;  Affordable housing could be hit hard as sea levels rise;  Environmental engineer launches group for Latinos in sustainability;  New tool called ‘Vulcan’ could help cities better estimate their carbon dioxide emissions; Women scientists launch ‘Science Moms,’ a climate campaign aimed at mothers.

The Harvard Law School Environmental & Energy Law Program

The Harvard Law School Environmental & Energy Law Program conducts innovative legal analyses to improve environmental and climate outcomes and support clean energy.

We identify strategies for policymakers and the private sector to overcome obstacles to environmental protection; facilitate the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable future; address the disruptive effects of climate change; and protect public health and welfare from environmental degradation.

Above the Fold – Week’s Best & Covid

Environmental Health News puts out weekend ‘summary’ emails, in addition to their daily emails.

EHN Week’s Best: April 16, 2021: forever chemicals on paper straws; Piney Point pollution; jails and environmental justice; DDT; PFAS; drought’s impact on farming water;  rechargeable batteries – real cost; Mexico and coal; heavy metals in children’s food; Japan dumping Fukushima’s radioactive water into the ocean.

EHN Covid: April 16, 2021: facemask garbage; underserved communities & J&J vaccine halt; green spaces & housing justice;  loosing women scientists; how to stop a pandemic.

DeSmogBlog, April 17, 2021

Articles include: Security Firm Accused of Working Illegally on O&G Pipelines; ‘Net-Zero’ PledgesDelay Climate Action new paper warns; Fossil Fuel Companies’ Tough Sell: Oil and Gas Sites With Costly Environmental Clean-up;  Shell’s Science Museum Climate Exhibition;  Irish Politicians And New Cheese Factory;  Environmental Racism, Europe, and Coal Use;  European Court & Climate-Related Human Rights Challenges; Methane Emissions Spiked in 2020;  Climate Disinformation Database: Bjørn Lomborg.

What a 1,600-year-old New Zealand tree can tell us about climate change

Vox: What a 1,600-year-old New Zealand tree can tell us about climate change. Buried in mud for millennia, some of the hulking kauri trees in rural Northland are portals to the past, present, and future of Earth’s climate.

This story is part of Down to Earth, a new Vox reporting initiative on the science, politics, and economics of the biodiversity crisis.

In February 2019, Mark Magee was scraping the bucket of his 45-ton excavator through a hillside when it hit something 30 feet down that wouldn’t budge.

It was high summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and Magee, a construction foreman, was clearing a platform for a new geothermal power plant near Ngāwhā, a tiny community in New Zealand’s Northland region, the long peninsula that stretches from the city of Auckland to the country’s northern tip.

He called in additional digger drivers to help. Gradually, as the machines peeled away the mudstone encasing the obstinate object, they realized it was a tree — and not an ordinary tree. More and more of it appeared, a seemingly endless log. When it lay uncovered, complete with a medusa-like rootball, it measured 65 feet long and 8 feet across, and weighed 65 tons.

The Daily Climate, April 15, 2021

Articles include: 2050 Goals are inadequate; champagne & climate change; 100% clean power; renewable energy powers decarbonization; electric vehicles by 2035; Interior Department and Manchin; Epic Drought; Indian monsoon season; ticks moving into the Arctic; East African oil pipeline; American research station abandoned; food web in the Great Lakes.

The Daily Climate, April 13, 2021

Articles include: Reactions to ‘Fracktured’ investigation; Native communities and rising waters; Losing ‘gods’ to climate change; American Jobs Plan; climate change, wildfires, and Elk; California, oil wells, and groundwater pollution; NFTs fueling climate change; Pacific heat wave & the Gulf of Mexico; burning pig poop; polluting SUVs; laws aimed at pipeline protestors; moms battling climate change.

Yale Climate Connections, April 9, 2021

Articles include: Wind and solar energy are job creators. Which states are taking advantage? Forecasters predict an above-average Atlantic hurricane season in 2021;  How the nonprofit Green 2.0 is tackling the environmental movement’s diversity problem; Experts lay out their case against carbon pricing; Some insightful background pieces on Bangladesh;  Extreme weather threatens internet infrastructure, broadband pioneer warns; How libraries are improving climate literacy in their communities;  Georgia-based innovation lab works to speed the transition to clean transportation; Scholar-advocate Beverly Wright pushes for equity and justice in climate policy;  Climate change is making it harder to grow the potatoes traditionally used for French fries

Ecological impacts of solar geoengineering are highly uncertain

Ars Technica: Ecological impacts of solar geoengineering are highly uncertain. New research describes the unknowns in our knowledge of solar geoengineering.

Without condoning or condemning the poorly understood tactic, recent reports suggest we should try to understand one proposed strategy to cool the planet: altering the atmosphere to reflect sunlight. Called solar radiation modification (SRM), this strategy is a type of geoengineering that involves scattering particles into the sky to reflect sunlight back out into space so it can’t warm the Earth’s atmosphere.

In theory, SRM could cool off the planet and help limit global warming to 1.5ºC compared to preindustrial levels. But it’s viewed as something of a last-resort tool to tackle climate change. Two new analyses explore what deploying this tactic could mean for the environment and the flora, fauna, and people living in it. In all, the authors of both reports suggest that more work needs to be done to understand SRM.