We’ve lost another decade on climate change. Even as greenhouse gases in the atmosphere race toward levels that could lock in catastrophic warming, the world continued to pump out more. Our collective failure to begin cutting emissions over the last 10 years …Continue reading
This NASA satellite image shows the extent of Australia’s devastating wildfires
The context Some of the worst wildfires in decades have been burning across Australia in recent months, exacerbated by hot, dry, windy conditions and rising global temperatures. Almost 15 million acres of land have burned so far, compared with two million acres in California in …Continue reading
A fully electric aircraft has just made its first commercial flight
The first flight of a fully electric commercial aircraft took place yesterday around Vancouver, Canada. It lasted just 15 minutes. About the plane: The plane was a 62-year-old, six-passenger seaplane that had been retrofitted with an electric motor. It was designed by Australian engineering …Continue reading
This Startup Developed a Promising New Battery Material—and a Novel Survival Strategy
As Kenan Sahin walks through the labs at Tiax, an energy technology development firm located along Boston’s tech beltway, he points to a row of little muffle furnaces in a small beige room. The company’s researchers use the ovens to heat mixtures …Continue reading
The developing world has hit the brakes on clean energy
Clean-energy investments in the developing world plummeted last year while coal use reached a record high. Those are very bad signs for the climate. Most of the world’s economic expansion in the coming decades will be in nations like China, India, and …Continue reading
Get ready for tens of millions of climate refugees
In 2006, the British economist Nicholas Stern warned that one of the biggest dangers of climate change would be mass migration. “Climate-related shocks have sparked violent conflict in the past,” he wrote, “and conflict is a serious risk in areas such as …Continue reading
Sea-level rise could flood hundreds of millions more than expected
By the end of this century, rising oceans will almost certainly flood the lands where tens of millions of people live as accelerating climate change warms the waters and melts ice sheets. But precise estimates of the vulnerable populations depend on precise …Continue reading
South Pole sea ice is now vanishing at an alarming rate, too
The background: The disappearance of Arctic sea ice has been accelerating since the late 1990s, outpacing rates predicted by climate models and seizing media attention (see “How nuclear weapons research revealed new climate threats”). But it’s been an altogether different story at …Continue reading
How a town destroyed by fire is trying to make itself fireproof
The Camp Fire that ripped through the Sierra Nevada foothills last fall was the most destructive in California’s history, consuming nearly 19,000 structures and killing 85 people. Around 90% of the homes in Paradise, California, were destroyed. Only an estimated 3,000 people …Continue reading
Soaring temperatures will raise the risk of armed conflict
A new analysis in Nature finds that climate change has likely played a relatively small role in driving armed conflict so far. But if temperatures reach more than 2 °C above preindustrial levels, it may substantially increase violence around the globe. The …Continue reading