Category Archives: alo

States cut water use as Colorado River runs low. That’s actually good news.

by juliannsterrett Posted on August 16, 2019

For the first time in history, low water levels on the Colorado River have forced Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico to cut back the amount of water they use. It’s the latest example of climate change affecting daily life, but also an encouraging sign that people can handle a world with less: These orderly cutbacks are only happening because seven U.S. states and Mexico had agreed to abide by conservation rules when flows subside, rather than fight for the last drops.

“It is a new era of limits,” said Kevin Moran, who directs the Environmental Defense Fund’s Colorado River efforts.

The Colorado River is a vital source of water for the American West, sustaining some 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland. And it’s been under enormous stress. Since 2000, the watershed has been, to put it mildly, dry. The region is suffering the worst 20-year drought in modern times.

A Bureau of Reclamation study of Colorado River levels, released Thursday, triggered the cutbacks. The Rocky Mountains finally turned white with heavy snow last winter, but despite a galloping spring runoff, drought persists and bathtub-ringed reservoirs in the Grand Canyon are low. In its study, the Bureau highlighted the unique circumstances: “This 20-year period is also one of the driest in the 1,200-year paleo record.”

Rising temperatures brought on by rising carbon emissions are partly to blame. “Approximately one‐third of the [Colorado River] flow loss is due to high temperatures now common in the basin, a result of human caused climate change,” wrote scientists Brad Udall and Jonathan Overpeck in a study published in 2017 that anticipated water will only become scarcer in the future.

But these water-use reductions are also an example of people binding themselves to rules to deal with scarce resources, rather than going to court, or war. The cutbacks come from an agreement hammered out by the Southwestern states and Mexico to impose limits on themselves.

“It’s not necessarily well known or talked about, but this collaboration between the states and Mexico is one of the most successful cross-border water management stories in the world,” Moran said.

Over the long course of history, the various parties have fought each other over water, but found that cooperation simply works better, Moran said. By working together, they’ve already managed to reduce the amount of water drawn for the last five years from the lower Colorado River Basin. In fact, they’ve cut back more in each of those years more than required by their agreement in 2020, said John Fleck, the director of the University of New Mexico Water Resources Program, who wrote the book Water is for Fighting Over, on the history of conflicts over the Colorado River.

“It puts the lie to the idea that water use is just going up and up and up: It’s been on a downward trend for a decade and a half at a time when population is increasing and agriculture is as productive as ever,” Fleck said. “We’re beyond the Malthusian math that suggests we’re going to run out of water and die.”

The region will need to go further to keep up with climate change and refill reservoirs, Fleck said. But the progress so far leaves him hopeful that people can resolve conflicts over scarce resources in this new era of limits.

“The key, I think, is for the water users to realize that you can have healthy, successful communities with declining water,” Fleck said. That opens up the space for collaboration, and allow them to get beyond the old myth that water is for fighting over.”

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States cut water use as Colorado River runs low. That’s actually good news.

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Greenland’s moment in the sun goes beyond Trump’s real estate interests

by CristinBKY Posted on August 16, 2019

Greenland is sooo hot right now. And we’re not just talking literally (though, yeah, that’s also true). In the last week, the gigantic Arctic island has been the focus of several news stories. Here’s a quick round-up of why Greenland is blowing up your Twitter feed:

#1: President Trump expressed interest in buying Greenland

Let’s start with the most bizarre story. According to a story from the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, President Donald Trump repeatedly asked his top aides “with varying degrees of seriousness” how he could buy Greenland. Like, literally buy it.

“It has to be an April Fool’s joke,” the island’s former prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen tweeted. “Totally out of season.”

FYI Greenland is currently a self-ruling part of Denmark, which controls the region’s foreign and security policy. Still, the president somehow thinks that buying 836,300 square miles of fjord-riddled tundra floating in the middle of the North Atlantic could be feasible since “Denmark was having financial trouble over its assistance to Greenland.”

In case you’re wondering, “Um, why would he do that?” it’s not necessarily because the president is eyeing the island as the next Trump Towers location. After all, 80 percent of Greenland is covered by an ice sheet, and the population is estimated at less than 60,000. But the island is considered to be rich in valuable minerals, which may be easier to access as its vast ice sheets melt.

Of course, there are some major issues with this plan. For one thing, Greenland is not looking for a buyer. In response to Trump’s alleged interest in purchasing the island, officials politely told the president, Thanks, but no thanks.

”We have a good cooperation with [the] USA, and we see it as an expression of greater interest in investing in our country and the possibilities we offer,” the government of Greenland said in a short statement. “Of course, Greenland is not for sale.”

#2: Greenland is melting

For decades, the Arctic has been galloping toward a more perturbed state butt they seem to have reached a fever pitch this summer. Greenland’s ice sheet just had its biggest daily melt event ever recorded. That resulting rise in sea level is, you know, bad news for all us coastal peeps.

The story received a lot of attention after sobering images of Greenland’s melting glaciers flooded the internet. According to the Associated Press, a team of NASA scientists is flying over Greenland to further understand why this is happening. Greenlanders, on the other hand, have a pretty good idea of what to blame (see next story).

#3: Greenlanders are convinced of climate change

Greenlanders are not snoozing on global warming. According to the first-ever national survey examining the human impact of the climate emergency, dubbed Greenlandic Perspectives on Climate Change, 92 percent of people in Greenland believe climate change is happening.

As for the 8 percent of respondents who didn’t answer in the affirmative? Only 1 percent actually said they didn’t believe in climate change, and around 6 percent said they didn’t know.

More than three-quarters of Greenlanders surveyed said they’ve felt the effects of climate change, with many expressing concerns about everything from its impact on sled dogs to food security.

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Greenland’s moment in the sun goes beyond Trump’s real estate interests

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The Trump administration tried to bury a climate study on … rice?

by MarisaHarlow Posted on August 16, 2019

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is supposed to use the “latest available science” to help the nation’s farmers avoid risk, according to its own mission. So it was more than a little surprising when, last year, the agency decided not to promote an alarming study (that two of its employees had contributed to) that showed climate change could lessen the nutritional value of rice — a crop the agency says the U.S. is a “major exporter” of.

Here’s the gist of the research: Rice may not be super flavorful by itself, but for millions of people, particularly in Southeast Asia, it’s an important source of both protein and calories. Rice also contains a suite of B vitamins, iron, and zinc. But those nutrients appear to decrease if rice is grown in high ambient concentrations of CO2 — the kind that climate models are predicting for the end of the century. Scientists say that could exacerbate the incidence of illnesses like malaria and diarrheal disease in places that rely on the staple crop.

At first, the Agricultural Research Service, the USDA’s in-house research arm, seemed open to promoting the study. When Jeff Hodson, the director of communications at the University of Washington’s school of public health (from where two of the paper’s contributors hailed), reached out to the ARS about coordinating efforts to get the word out to journalists about the research, he was told the department had begun drafting a press release. But a week later he was notified the USDA had killed its promotional efforts around the study.

In an email explaining the decision to Hodson, a USDA spokesperson wrote, “The narrative really isn’t supported by the data in the paper.” She added: “Please let me know how you will proceed with your own press release.”

Questions about the muffling of the rice research were also circling within the USDA. Lewis Ziska, a 25-year veteran of the department who worked on the study told Grist the decision to keep the paper quiet was a departure from protocol. The highly unusual manner in which the ARS abruptly canceled the press release and the excuse the agency gave for doing so, he said, “indicated that it wasn’t a question of the science anymore, it was a question of the ideology.” He began to wonder if the study was being buried due, at least in part, to the Trump administration’s apparent indifference toward climate change.

“This is the first time that we’ve been told that the data don’t support the findings for any climate paper; that’s never happened before,” Ziska said.

But despite the USDA’s non-promotion, the paper did not quietly fade into academic obscurity. After checking with the interim head of the School of Public Health — who said in an email that the research seemed “straightforward” — Hodson decided to press on with promoting the paper. The university issued a press release that included a quote from Ziska, and they helped connect reporters with him as well as the school’s own scientists. The research garnered coverage in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Seattle Times, among other outlets.

Ziska and his team’s findings that protein, iron, and zinc levels decreased in rice grown in higher carbon dioxide concentrations verified the work of Samuel Myers, a research scientist at Harvard’s Center for the Environment who works closely on the human health impacts of climate change. To Myers, who examined this incident against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s war on climate science, it seemed to be part of a pattern.

“The USDA is part of a federal administration that can only be described in legal terms as ‘exhibiting depraved indifference to climate change,’” he said. Suppressing a study that highlighted the negative effects of global warming on a major food staple is, Myers added, “completely consistent with the way the federal administration has been acting for the past two and a half years.”

The Trump administration’s combative position on all things climate and environment has had a significant and lasting impact on multiple federal agencies. Earlier this month, Ziska decided to abandon his tenure at the USDA after securing a job at Columbia University. At the Environmental Protection Agency, employees say morale has plummeted as the agency continues to roll back key environmental and health regulations. Mentions of climate change have disappeared from government websites.

Rather than try to increase retention rates, some critics say these agencies are happy to lose some of their more seasoned officials. The Bureau of Land Management is planning to move its headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Colorado, in what at least one representative and multiple environment groups have called a scheme to shake its tenured policy officials. And in July, the USDA gave its D.C.-based employees a week to decide whether they would relocate to the department’s new headquarters in Kansas City. Administration officials said the move was aimed at cutting costs; critics said it was yet another attempt to bleed tenured talent.

In a statement to Grist, a USDA spokesperson pushed back on the idea that the agency is suppressing climate change research. “No one attempted to block the paper – it is freely available in the science literature,” the spokesperson wrote, adding that higher-ups at the agency disagreed with the paper’s conclusion that rising levels of CO2 would put 600 million people at risk of vitamin deficiency. “Issuing an ARS press release would have erroneously signified that ARS concurs with the nutrition-related claims,” the spokesperson noted.

“The notion that this is not of public health significance is just ridiculous,” said Harvard’s Myers, in response to the ARS’s position on the research. The controversial study just focused on rice, he added, but “every other food crop across the board is losing nutrients in response to CO2.”

A spokesperson for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science Advances, the journal where the rice article appeared, stood behind the research, saying that the study went through “rigorous peer review” before it was published.

For Ziska, the incident constituted an abdication of one of ARS’s responsibilities, which is working to solve climate change-related issues that farmers face. “It’s surreal to me,” he said.

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The Trump administration tried to bury a climate study on … rice?

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We’ve got another ozone problem, and it’s not what you think

by juliannvardon Posted on August 15, 2019

Most of us know ozone as that benevolent stratospheric layer that absorbs the sun’s harmful UV light and keeps us safe. In the 1980s, scientists found a “hole” in the ozone layer — really just a large section that was getting precariously thin — caused by the use of potent chemicals called CFCs. The world took action and rapidly banned CFCs, effectively solving the problem.

But the beneficial ozone up in the stratosphere has an evil cousin, and it’s right here on the ground. A new study funded by the Environmental Protection Agency found that ground-level ozone — the main ingredient in smog — is on the rise, an issue that could have pretty severe public health consequences. Even a relatively small spike in ozone pollution where you live (just three parts per billion) has a similar effect on your lungs as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for 29 years, according to the authors of the study.

This small increase in ozone ramps up your risk of emphysema, a form of chronic lung disease that can lead to hospitalization and death. Researchers from universities around the country kept tabs on more than 7,000 adults in six U.S. cities over a period of 18 years for the study, which was published in the journal JAMA.

Unlike the ozone layer, which is a naturally occurring part of the stratosphere, ground-level ozone is formed when pollutants from things like cars, chemical plants, and refineries react with sunlight. And beyond the obvious pollution sources, guess what’s making ground-level ozone even worse?

“What we will be seeing with climate change is an increase in the sunlight part of the equation,” said Joel Kaufman, one of the authors of the study. “Ozone increases with more sunshine, heat waves, and so forth.”

That’s not to say we can’t do something about smog. In fact, we already have. Since the Clean Air Act was implemented in 1970, pollution at the ground level has been reduced. Unfortunately, the Trump administration is in the process of rolling back environmental policies aimed at improving air quality. So it doesn’t look like we’ll be solving the ground-level ozone problem, or the climate crisis, anytime soon.

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We’ve got another ozone problem, and it’s not what you think

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A romance novel about Hurricane Maria exists. Here’s why.

by LucretiRickel Posted on August 15, 2019

Nothing puts a damper on one’s romantic life like a Category 5 hurricane. That’s just one of the obstacles faced by 20-year-old former sex worker Dolores “Dulce” Garcia, the sugar daddy-dealing protagonist of the new book Side Chick Nation. As she tries to outrun her past by going from Miami to the Caribbean, she ultimately lands in Puerto Rico just in time for Hurricane Maria.

Climate change and colonialism don’t typically make for a sexy beach read, but Side Chick Nation, the fourth installment in UC Berkeley lecturer Aya de León’s Justice Hustlers feminist heist series, attempts to do just that — weaving action and romance into the vivid backdrop of Puerto Rico’s stilting recovery from Hurricane Maria.

Dulce, the titular “side chick,” is a world-weary pragmatist; she answers the call from a past sugar daddy looking to, well, “reconnect,” all while lying to Zavier, the man with whom she has actually fallen for after just a few dates. After Hurricane Irma slows the flow of sugar daddies in Puerto Rico to a trickle, she finds herself sleeping in a storage unit in San Juan, waiting for the next storm — Maria — to hit.

In the aftermath of the hurricane, she serves as a witness to both the heartbreaking reality of climate change and the exploitation that can ensue. She notes the international businessmen who flock to the island to manipulate the destruction for their own financial gain, making shady use of relief funds and devastating the island even more. De León draws parallels between Dulce’s experience as a “side chick” and Puerto Rico’s relationship with the mainland, which cheerfully exploits the U.S. territory in good times but abandons it when it is in need.

For me, as a Puerto Rican transplant who has reported on Puerto Rico’s recovery after Maria, I was intrigued by the novel’s premise. I talked with de León, who teaches creative writing at UC Berkeley, about Side Chick Nation and why she chose popular fiction as a means to get folks riled up about the climate crisis.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Image courtesy of Aya de León

Q.Why did you write this book? What do you hope readers get out of it?

A. The biggest takeaway that I really want for everyone has to do with Hurricane Maria and the crisis of climate and colonialism in Puerto Rico. I’m hoping people feel that intersection at a level of empathy. Part of what I was thinking of when I was writing was, in the future when this book comes out, the hurricane will have receded from the headlines and yet the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico will be ongoing. I just wanted to make sure that folks could connect to these human stories, this unprecedented level of this devastation at this intersection.

Something that was also super important to me for this book is [to reach] an audience that includes young women of color. I really like the idea of young women of color thinking of themselves as activists around issues like the climate. Being a part of the Puerto Rican diaspora and watching the island get hit made it clear to me that climate change is the top political priority. Climate is something that affects everybody and affects people of color even more. The perception of environmentalism is that it’s a white movement — and that’s not actually true. So I wanted to push back on that.

Q.Where did you get the idea to set the fourth installment of your Justice Hustlers series in a post-Maria Puerto Rico?

A. I was writing another book at the time. I had outlined it and started to work on it. Then, the hurricane hit and I was like, “Oh my god, I have to write about the hurricane!” It occurred to me that the biggest platform that I have was this Justice Hustlers series. I wasn’t sure how to make it make sense with the rest of the series, but I remembered one character from a previous book — Dulce. One of the things I was reading at the time was Salvage the Bones, a novel about Hurricane Katrina. It made me think: what does it mean for the audience to know what’s gonna happen while the characters don’t know?

Q.You went to Puerto Rico to research this book. What was that like?

A. I had not been back to Puerto Rico for a decade. I visited in 2018 about a year after Hurricane Maria hit. It was really intense to be back. One of the things that was so profound is that the whole island has signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There was some sort of emotional chill because people had been deeply impacted in a lot of ways.

I mostly was in San Juan where things looked more or less back to normal. Still, stores were closed and traffic lights were knocked out — and that was almost a year later! I rented a car and drove around the interior of the island, where I saw lots of FEMA tarps blue roofs. I definitely got a sense of the devastation. That was key for me — to just go and just bear witness. It was less about information and more about being present with the community.

Q.The book deals with a lot of really intense issues like colonialism and disaster capitalists while also telling this gripping, feminist romance storyline. Do you think popular fiction in general, might be the way to get people to understand the complex relationship between disparity and climate crisis?

A. I think popular fiction and fiction, in general, has always played that role. It’s hard to empathize with a historical event, but it’s easy to empathize with an individual. And that’s what I wanted — for people to connect. What does it mean to have your homeland devastated, your people devastated? Ultimately, I’m writing romantic suspense but I’m thinking of suspenseful situations that relate to big political situations — like Hurricane María.

Q. Can you tell me about the challenges of writing about disaster?

A. I just had to cry a lot. I had to grieve a lot. And I had to hold off feelings like being unworthy or unable or not up to the task. Here we have this thing that changed the Puerto Rican people, and here I am, this sort of west coast, mixed-heritage diaspora Puerto Rican who is like the second generation born in the U.S. How could I possibly be the person to write this book? Ultimately it’s just the reality of the disaster. Maybe I’m not the right person, but I’m the person with a book contract and I can’t write about anything else.

The hurricane changed stuff for everyone in the diaspora. We have to show up, and what I have to bring to the table is a book that is a popular fiction approach. This may be the story for people that aren’t gonna read Naomi Klein’s Battle for Paradise — although I hope everybody will read that too! I wanted the message to get to the places where I already had a platform. I can’t imagine having written about anything else. This is the story of my people right now.

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A romance novel about Hurricane Maria exists. Here’s why.

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This sexy beach read might actually help Puerto Rico’s hurricane recovery

by SaraRSXFygczmki Posted on August 15, 2019

Nothing puts a damper on one’s romantic life like a Category 5 hurricane. That’s just one of the obstacles faced by 20-year-old former sex worker Dolores “Dulce” Garcia, the sugar daddy-dealing protagonist of the new book Side Chick Nation. As she tries to outrun her past by going from Miami to the Caribbean, she ultimately lands in Puerto Rico just in time for Hurricane Maria.

Climate change and colonialism don’t typically make for a sexy beach read, but Side Chick Nation, the fourth installment in UC Berkeley lecturer Aya de León’s Justice Hustlers feminist heist series, attempts to do just that — weaving action and romance into the vivid backdrop of Puerto Rico’s stilting recovery from Hurricane Maria.

Dulce, the titular “side chick,” is a world-weary pragmatist; she answers the call from a past sugar daddy looking to, well, “reconnect,” all while lying to Zavier, the man with whom she has actually fallen for after just a few dates. After Hurricane Irma slows the flow of sugar daddies in Puerto Rico to a trickle, she finds herself sleeping in a storage unit in San Juan, waiting for the next storm — Maria — to hit.

In the aftermath of the hurricane, she serves as a witness to both the heartbreaking reality of climate change and the exploitation that can ensue. She notes the international businessmen who flock to the island to manipulate the destruction for their own financial gain, making shady use of relief funds and devastating the island even more. De León draws parallels between Dulce’s experience as a “side chick” and Puerto Rico’s relationship with the mainland, which cheerfully exploits the U.S. territory in good times but abandons it when it is in need.

For me, as a Puerto Rican transplant who has reported on Puerto Rico’s recovery after Maria, I was intrigued by the novel’s premise. I talked with de León, who teaches creative writing at UC Berkeley, about Side Chick Nation and why she chose popular fiction as a means to get folks riled up about the climate crisis.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Image courtesy of Aya de León

Q.Why did you write this book? What do you hope readers get out of it?

A. The biggest takeaway that I really want for everyone has to do with Hurricane Maria and the crisis of climate and colonialism in Puerto Rico. I’m hoping people feel that intersection at a level of empathy. Part of what I was thinking of when I was writing was, in the future when this book comes out, the hurricane will have receded from the headlines and yet the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico will be ongoing. I just wanted to make sure that folks could connect to these human stories, this unprecedented level of this devastation at this intersection.

Something that was also super important to me for this book is [to reach] an audience that includes young women of color. I really like the idea of young women of color thinking of themselves as activists around issues like the climate. Being a part of the Puerto Rican diaspora and watching the island get hit made it clear to me that climate change is the top political priority. Climate is something that affects everybody and affects people of color even more. The perception of environmentalism is that it’s a white movement — and that’s not actually true. So I wanted to push back on that.

Q.Where did you get the idea to set the fourth installment of your Justice Hustlers series in a post-Maria Puerto Rico?

A. I was writing another book at the time. I had outlined it and started to work on it. Then, the hurricane hit and I was like, “Oh my god, I have to write about the hurricane!” It occurred to me that the biggest platform that I have was this Justice Hustlers series. I wasn’t sure how to make it make sense with the rest of the series, but I remembered one character from a previous book — Dulce. One of the things I was reading at the time was Salvage the Bones, a novel about Hurricane Katrina. It made me think: what does it mean for the audience to know what’s gonna happen while the characters don’t know?

Q.You went to Puerto Rico to research this book. What was that like?

A. I had not been back to Puerto Rico for a decade. I visited in 2018 about a year after Hurricane Maria hit. It was really intense to be back. One of the things that was so profound is that the whole island has signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There was some sort of emotional chill because people had been deeply impacted in a lot of ways.

I mostly was in San Juan where things looked more or less back to normal. Still, stores were closed and traffic lights were knocked out — and that was almost a year later! I rented a car and drove around the interior of the island, where I saw lots of FEMA tarps blue roofs. I definitely got a sense of the devastation. That was key for me — to just go and just bear witness. It was less about information and more about being present with the community.

Q.The book deals with a lot of really intense issues like colonialism and disaster capitalists while also telling this gripping, feminist romance storyline. Do you think popular fiction in general, might be the way to get people to understand the complex relationship between disparity and climate crisis?

A. I think popular fiction and fiction, in general, has always played that role. It’s hard to empathize with a historical event, but it’s easy to empathize with an individual. And that’s what I wanted — for people to connect. What does it mean to have your homeland devastated, your people devastated? Ultimately, I’m writing romantic suspense but I’m thinking of suspenseful situations that relate to big political situations — like Hurricane María.

Q. Can you tell me about the challenges of writing about disaster?

A. I just had to cry a lot. I had to grieve a lot. And I had to hold off feelings like being unworthy or unable or not up to the task. Here we have this thing that changed the Puerto Rican people, and here I am, this sort of west coast, mixed-heritage diaspora Puerto Rican who is like the second generation born in the U.S. How could I possibly be the person to write this book? Ultimately it’s just the reality of the disaster. Maybe I’m not the right person, but I’m the person with a book contract and I can’t write about anything else.

The hurricane changed stuff for everyone in the diaspora. We have to show up, and what I have to bring to the table is a book that is a popular fiction approach. This may be the story for people that aren’t gonna read Naomi Klein’s Battle for Paradise — although I hope everybody will read that too! I wanted the message to get to the places where I already had a platform. I can’t imagine having written about anything else. This is the story of my people right now.

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This sexy beach read might actually help Puerto Rico’s hurricane recovery

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How do countries cover climate change? Depends how rich they are.

by RowenaGisborne9 Posted on August 15, 2019

Deadly heat waves, violent downpours, wildfires that seem to get more intense every year — the climate crisis leaves no part of the globe untouched. But around the world, the media spins warming and its effects differently. The No. 1 sign of how the press in a given country talks about it? Wealth.

Richer nations tend to politicize the issue, while poorer nations more often present it as a problem of international concern, according to a new study published in the journal Global Environmental Change. Researchers in Kansas and Vietnam analyzed more than 37,000 news articles from 45 countries and territories using computer algorithms and found that the strongest predictor of how a given country’s press will cover climate change is Gross Domestic Product per capita. In short: The way a country’s media reports on global warming is based on the resources available to combat it.

Richer countries: ‘Is there even a problem?’

Coverage in affluent countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and Spain, focuses on the political debate over how to use ample national resources to address global warming — or whether to do so at all.

Rich countries also tend to frame global warming as a scientific issue — which makes sense, considering that they can devote more dollars to science research. But the study also found that science wasn’t always portrayed accurately. Outlets in richer nations often highlight the voices of people who deny the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and is caused by humans. (That consensus among scientists, for the record, has now likely passed 99 percent). It’s a recurring problem: A new study in the journal Nature Communications found that between 2000 and 2016, prominent climate deniers were featured in a whopping 50 percent more articles than hundreds of scientists.

The media in rich nations “really like the conflict” and tend to “portray climate change as an issue that has not been settled,” said Hong T. Vu, lead author of the study looking at rich vs poor nations and an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Kansas.

Poorer countries: ‘We’re all in this together’

In contrast, poorer countries, such as Gambia, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka, simply can’t afford to deny climate change — or adapt to it as easily as wealthier countries do. They rely on aid from richer nations to help fund their efforts to stave off warming’s effects, a trend that shows up in the news. An editorial in the Fiji Times earlier this year, for instance, says that curbing the effects of climate change demands a “global effort.” It also points to the influx of climate adaption money coming into the Pacific region from international agencies.

Asking richer nations to contribute more to climate action efforts may sound like charity, but well-to-do nations contribute way more than poorer nations to carbon dioxide emissions to begin with, and that they generally stand to fare better under warming conditions. A study from Stanford University earlier this year found that climate change is widening the economic gap between countries, simultaneously making rich ones richer and poor ones poorer.

Everyone: Too few solutions

Researchers did find some across-the-board trends when they analyzed coverage in both rich and poor nations. After looking at thousands of articles, Vu’s team determined that the most common frame in climate change coverage was international relations, followed by its effects on the economy. The least popular frame for coverage? Social progress. Only 4 percent of stories covered new lifestyle changes or societal developments related to our overheating planet.

“If we look back, climate change has been in the public discussion for 30 years, and we are not doing very well in communicating it,” Vu said. He hopes that the media can figure out how to communicate the issue as an urgent problem that requires meaningful policy action while simultaneously encouraging people to see the role they can play in remedying our planetary predicament.

He probably wouldn’t mind if it would stop sowing confusion about the science, either.

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How do countries cover climate change? Depends how rich they are.

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Investigating Science – Jennifer DYE

by Myrna Posted on August 14, 2019

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Investigating Science

A Guide to Independent Research

Jennifer DYE

Genre: Reference

Price: $9.99

Publish Date: May 1, 2010

Publisher: Linus Publications

Seller: Jennifer DYE


Students have great questions and are natural scientist but often need some help in navigating their way through the research process. Investigating Science provides guidelines and even rubrics for each step of the research process. Written in student language this resources is a valuable resource for all students doing research. A companion YouTube channel provides additional support videos. In the summer of 2020 a teacher resource book will also be launched including sample student work.

Link – 

Investigating Science – Jennifer DYE

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The climate change ‘tipping point’ has already arrived for these 70 U.S. counties

by PedroFljuqey Posted on August 14, 2019

For years now now, we’ve been hearing warnings about 2 degrees Celsius of warming — the global average cautioned against as part of the 2015 Paris accord. But according to a Washington Post interactive published on Tuesday, that so-called “tipping point” has already arrived in many towns across the country.

The earth is warming at an uneven rate. The Post looked at 100+ years of data from over 3,000 U.S counties and found that over 70 have already exceeded 2 degrees C of warming above pre-industrial levels. That translates to 34 million people (roughly 1 in 10 Americans) living in regions that are heating especially rapidly.

So where are the U.S. hot spots? The counties that have already reached 2 degrees C or warming are spread throughout the U.S., but there are some regional trends. The fastest-warming state in the country is Alaska, which may come as no surprise given its recent spate of heat waves and wildfires. In the Lower 48, Rhode Island’s average temperature increase is the first to pass 2 degrees Celsius, with other parts of the Northeast, including New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts, not far behind.

While the east coast has been sizzling this summer, the Post found that most regional increases were driven by warming winter temperatures, not summer heat waves. That’s means lakes can’t freeze (causing algae blooms, in some cases) and pests don’t die as per usual in certain historically cold regions. Less snow and ice also means those regions are less able to reflect solar radiation during winter, further feeding into the warming cycle.

The freezing point “is the most critical threshold among all temperatures,” David A. Robinson, New Jersey state climatologist and professor at Rutgers University’s department of geography, told the Post.

Scientists aren’t yet sure why the Northeast is warming so quickly. But experts say these 2-degree C hotspots are like little pieces of the future here in the present, showing us what’s coming.

Of course, climate catastrophes aren’t just about higher average regional temperatures. Cold, heat, flood, drought, and sea-level rise all pose significant risks to U.S. communities, according to a newly released analysis by the group Clever Real Estate. And bad news: The report found that many of the cities most at risk to the impacts of climate change are also the least prepared for it.

Clever Real Estate

There’s some concerning crossover between the Post’s list of rapidly warming counties and the areas identified by Clever Real Estate’s analysis (which was compiled by Eylul Tekin, a Ph.D. candidate at Washington University in St. Louis’ Memory Lab). Four of the top five cities with the “lowest degree of readiness” are located in Southern California (Anaheim, San Bernardino, Santa Ana, and Riverside). The counties in question have reached between 1.8 degrees C and 2.1 degrees C of warming compared to pre-industrial levels.

Parts of New Jersey also didn’t fare well on either list. Essex County has already hit the 2 degrees C warming mark, and Newark snagged the fifth spot on the list of places with the “largest difference between risk and readiness scores.”

So in short, there’s already a lot to sweat in many parts of the U.S. (which is even more reason to take climate action now). To get a better sense of the way your specific area is being affected, check out the two studies we mentioned here and here.

Originally posted here:  

The climate change ‘tipping point’ has already arrived for these 70 U.S. counties

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22 states sue the Trump administration over its climate ‘plan’

by LoriMajeski Posted on August 13, 2019

Twenty-two states and seven cities sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over the Environmental Protection Agency’s new plan for power plants. The lawsuit alleges that the so-called Affordable Clean Energy rule would accelerate the impacts of the climate crisis and impose health and safety risks on Americans.

The challenge — led by the states of New York, Massachusetts, California, Rhode Island, Hawaii, and the cities of Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia — comes two months after the EPA finalized the plan. The new rule replaced the Obama-era Clean Power Plan that set ambitious goals aimed at weakening carbon emissions coming from power plants. It gives a bit more elbow room to coal-powered stations and allows older ones to stay open longer.

“The science is indisputable; our climate is changing,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a tweet. “Ice caps are melting. Sea levels are rising. Weather is becoming more and more extreme. That’s why we are fighting back.”

A recent Harvard study shows that the EPA’s estimated carbon reductions from power plants under the new rule (which are pretty minor) wouldn’t hold up under changing market conditions. In addition, researchers say that the agency underestimated the health effects the rule would have in some states and overestimated its overall economic benefits.

Not that the EPA’s own projections looked pretty. The administration’s analysis found that the ACE rule, compared to the Clean Power Plan, would lead to 1,400 premature deaths by 2030 and would cost Americans $1.4 billion more per year than it saved.

Carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. increased by roughly 3.5 percent last year. The Harvard analysis suggests that Trump’s new rule could drive emissions even higher by failing to nail down target reductions. Meanwhile, it may result in more cases of respiratory illness, heart attacks, asthma, and early death due to exposure to particulate matter and toxic air pollutants.

The new lawsuit parallels the Republican-led effort to stop the Clean Power Plan in 2015, when 24 states led by Oklahoma sued the Obama administration over the rule. The Supreme Court hit pause on the plan a year later. Soon after President Trump took office, the EPA started crafting a Trump-friendly alternative to the plan.

If you compare the states that sued over the Obama-era rule in 2015 and those that are suing the Trump administration now, it’s no surprise that you’ll see a partisan divide. Only Colorado, Michigan, and North Carolina were part of both lawsuits.

An EPA spokesperson told the New York Times, “EPA worked diligently to ensure we produced a solid rule, that we believe will be upheld in the courts, unlike the previous Administration’s Clean Power Plan.” Only time will tell — it’s possible that the challenge could go all the way to the Supreme Court.

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22 states sue the Trump administration over its climate ‘plan’

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