By Vanessa Dezem and William Wilkes
(Bloomberg Markets) Angela Merkel’s slow-motion departure from the German political stage took an ironic turn in April as the chancellor tripped over a climate law she herself had drawn up. In a shock decision, judges on the country’s highest court ruled that Merkel’s faltering attempts to rewire the energy system away from fossil fuels would saddle future generations with the burden of cutting emissions. Merkel–once hailed as a climate leader, now denounced as a straggler–was ordered to speed things up.
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Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored)
irishexaminer.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from irishexaminer.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored)
irishexaminer.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from irishexaminer.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Homes destroyed by a storm in New York state in 1962. Photograph: Bettmann/Getty/Guardian Design
The effects of ‘weird weather’ were already being felt in the 1960s, but scientists linking fossil fuels with climate change were dismissed as prophets of doom
Mon 5 Jul 2021 01.00 EDT
In August 1974, the CIA produced a study on “climatological research as it pertains to intelligence problems”. The diagnosis was dramatic. It warned of the emergence of a new era of weird weather, leading to political unrest and mass migration (which, in turn, would cause more unrest). The new era the agency imagined wasn’t necessarily one of hotter temperatures; the CIA had heard from scientists warning of global cooling as well as warming. But the direction in which the thermometer was travelling wasn’t their immediate concern; it was the political impact. They knew that the so-called “little ice age”, a series of cold snaps between, roughly, 1350 and 1850, had brought not only drought
Study Urges Leaders to Take Latest Arctic Science into Account, Rethink Emissions Goals
Written by AZoCleantechMay 18 2021
As the Paris Agreement was initially signed over five years ago, it has set the standard for the global measure to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, with over 70 nations taking on aspiring Nationally Determined Contributions that surpass initial obligations charted in the Agreement.
Image Credit: kamilpetran/Shutterstock.com
But a new study reported recently in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) claims that the carbon budget on which these commitments are based does not consider the latest science on Arctic feedback loops and calls for global leaders to reconsider emissions goals.