Governments have approved programmes and projects worth almost $1 billion to tackle growing threats to the natural world - and to help some of the Earth's most vulnerable people adapt to climate change - at two consecutive Global Environment Facility (GEF) meetings in Washington DC this week. They range from an ambitious $232 million integrated programme aimed at a “transformational shift in the agriculture and land use systems that are major drivers of environmental degradat

Soils hold 70 percent of the planet’s land-based carbon — three times the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Not only is carbon-rich soil a crucial tool in mitigating climate change, it is also essential to meet the food needs of Africa’s population, which is set to grow by 1.3 billion by 2050. When soils are managed sustainably, they store organic carbon that locks in soil moisture and increases soil fertility; they also remove greenhouse gases from the atmosp

Scientists from Israel and neighbouring Arab countries are joining forces to save Red Sea coral reefs from the threat of climate change. The alliance is the brainchild of Moaz Fine, an Israeli professor at Tel Aviv’s Bar-Ilan University, who invited marine experts from the countries that border the Red Sea to collaborate at a new research centre. The team will comprise representatives from Israel, Eritrea, Jordan and Egypt, with scientists from Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday said states can set their own carbon emissions standards for coal-fired power plants -- a rule that the agency itself says could result in 1,400 more premature deaths by 2030 than the Obama-era plan it will replace. The move fulfills part of President Donald Trump's promise to help the coal industry, but will likely face court challenges from environmental groups and several states who see the rollback as detrimental to clean a

At a time when the country is already deeply fractured along partisan lines, individual states are starting to pursue vastly different policies on climate change with the potential to cement an economic and social divide for years to come. A growing number of blue states are adopting sweeping new climate laws — such as New York’s bill, passed this week, to zero out net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 — that aim to reorient their entire economies around clean energy, transfor

California took a major step Wednesday toward becoming the first state to require solar panels on nearly all new homes, the latest sign of how renewable energy is gaining ground in the U.S. The California Energy Commission voted 5-0 to approve a mandate that residential buildings up to three stories high, including single-family homes and condos, be built with solar installations starting in 2020. https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-set-to-require-solar-on-new-homes-15258

Two years after a long-lasting undersea heat wave scalded large sections of the Great Barrier Reef, scientists have found that because so many corals died, much of the reef has probably been altered “forever.” “What we just experienced is one hell of a natural selection event,” said Terry Hughes, director of the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Queensland. In a notably blunt study in the journal Nature — laden

Social media is an interesting landscape of opinions, confirmation bias (consuming information that supports your beliefs), and expressions of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a psychological term published in the literature that argues that people think they know more about topics than they actually do. This week two very worrisome but important climate change (or global warming) related studies were highlighted in the media. One study suggested an eastward shift in the well-known

Until recently, communities suing fossil fuel companies over the costs of climate change have been located on the coasts: cities and counties in California, and New York City. But now, the litigation has jumped inland. Boulder and San Miguel Counties in Colorado, along with the city of Boulder, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against two oil companies, Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy, the Canadian giant. The suit, filed in state court, argues that fossil fuels sold by the companies

With global warming, we can make predictions and then take measurements to test those predictions. One prediction (a pretty obvious one) is that a warmer world will have less snow and ice. In particular, areas that have year-round ice and snow will start to melt. Alpine glaciers are large bodies of ice that can be formed high in mountains, typically in bowls called cirques. The ice slowly flows downwards, pulled by gravity, and is renewed in their upper regions. A sort of bal