ReportWire

Tag: Climate change

  • What to know about COP30, this year’s UN climate talks

    [ad_1]

    People from around the world are beginning to gather at the gateway of the Amazon in Belem, Brazil, for the 30th annual United Nations climate summit, the Conference of the Parties, known less formally as COP30.

    The aim is simple, but lofty: for countries to work together to stop the worst effects of human-caused climate change.

    That’s a goal many experts say is slipping out of reach. But the stakes are high. Climate change is already escalating disasters that mean life or death for billions of people around the world, and delaying action will only worsen the problem.

    Here’s what you need to know about COP30.

    With the world’s largest rainforest on its doorstep, many have lauded Belem as well-positioned to highlight the role of Indigenous peoples and land stewardship in addressing climate change.

    Although many past COPs have primarily focused on transitioning to cleaner energy sources, research has shown that shifting food systems is also a must. Countries also need to stop destroying the ecosystems that suck up pollution and protect humans from diseases.

    The government of Brazil is spearheading a new initiative called the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, a program designed to give nations a monetary reward for protecting forests. It remains to be seen whether world leaders will pledge enough money to make the project a success.

    Before the conference, many would-be attendees worried about whether the city could host tens of thousands of people. Delegates have booked rooms on cruise ships in the harbor. Others are staying in by-the-hour “love motels,” and some activists said they might camp out.

    The weather is expected to be oppressively hot and humid, and as such the host country has already written to attendees to make the dress code a little more informal.

    But some experts and locals say any discomfort is a much-needed reality check, especially for those coming from rich countries. The government of Brazil was adamant that the conference needed to be in Belem to showcase what’s at stake: Poorer communities are often more vulnerable to disasters worsened by climate change.

    Ten years ago, countries made a historic deal in the first global pact to fight climate change.

    Since then, the planet’s annual temperature has already jumped about 0.46 degrees Celsius (0.83 degrees Fahrenheit), one of the biggest 10-year temperature hikes on record, according to data from the European climate service Copernicus. The Paris Agreement was supposed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the historical average, but many scientists now say it’s unlikely countries will stay below that threshold.

    But the world has made some progress. Renewable energy is now cheaper in most places than polluting coal, oil and natural gas. And if countries agree to do what they’ve said so far, they could stave off a little over a full degree Celsius warming. That may not sound like much, but every tenth of a degree matters when it comes to the effects on catastrophic weather.

    This year, countries had homework: to show up with their updated national plans to fight climate change. The United States, one of the world’s biggest polluters, won’t be submitting theirs, having dropped out of the Paris Agreement. And many experts have criticized other countries’ plans as too little to do what’s needed.

    Unlike the Paris Agreement, or even last year when negotiators were trying to get countries to agree on how much rich countries should pay poor countries to adapt to climate change, this year’s talks aren’t expected to end with any ambitious new deal.

    Instead, organizers and analysts frame this year’s conference as the “implementation COP.”

    “Those who go to Belem asking the question ‘what is the agreement that is going to come out of it?’ are asking the wrong question,” said Christiana Figueres, former U.N. climate chief.

    For the talks to be a success, world leaders need to beef up efforts and money for adapting to climate change and fund billion-dollar efforts to prevent deforestation and land degradation, said Suely Vaz, who used to run Brazil’s environment agency.

    But Panama’s environment minister, Juan Carlos Navarro, told The Associated Press that he expects little from the talks. He said such meetings have become “a jet-setting orgy of bureaucrats who travel around the world with a tremendous carbon footprint and achieve nothing.”

    ___

    Follow Melina Walling on X @MelinaWalling and Bluesky @melinawalling.bsky.social.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trump’s Hatred of EVs Is Making Gas Cars More Expensive

    [ad_1]

    This story originally appeared on Mother Jones and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    As President Donald Trump sees it, environmental regulations that attempt to improve efficiency and address climate change only make products more expensive and perform worse. He has long blamed efficiency regulations for his frustrations with things like toilets and showerheads. He began his second term in office to “unleash prosperity through deregulation.”

    But there’s at least one big way that American companies and households may end up paying more, not less, for the president’s anti-environment policy moves.

    If you’re in the market for a vehicle, you’ve probably noticed: Cars are getting more expensive. Kelley Blue Book reported that the average sticker price for a new car topped $50,000 for the first time in September.

    And they aren’t just getting more expensive to buy; cars are getting more expensive to own. For most Americans, gasoline is their single-largest energy expenditure, around $2,930 per household each year on average.

    While a more efficient dishwasher, light bulb, or faucet may have a higher sticker price up front—especially as manufacturers adjust to new rules—cars, appliances, solar panels, and electronics can more than pay for themselves with lower operating costs over their lifetimes. And Trump’s agenda of suddenly rolling back efficiency rules has simultaneously made it harder for many industries to do business while raising costs for ordinary Americans.

    No one knows this better than the US auto industry, which has whiplashed between competing environmental regulations for over a decade.

    President Barack Obama tightened vehicle efficiency and pollution standards. In his first term, Trump loosened them. President Joe Biden reinstated and strengthened them. Now Trump is reversing course again—leaving the $1.6 trillion US auto industry unsure what turn to take next.

    Regulation Whiplash

    In July, the Environmental Protection Agency began undoing a foundational legal basis that lets the agency limit climate pollution from cars. Without it, the EPA has far less power to require automakers to manufacture cleaner vehicles, which hampers efforts to reduce one of the single biggest sources of carbon emissions.

    Trump’s transportation secretary, Sean P. Duffy, said in a statement over the summer that these moves “will lower vehicle costs and ensure the American people can purchase the cars they want.”

    But in reality, the shift may have the opposite effect. That’s because when the rules change every few years, automakers struggle to meet existing benchmarks and can’t plan ahead. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing companies like Ford, Toyota, and Volkswagen, sent a letter to the EPA in September saying that the administration’s moves and the repeal of incentives for electric cars mean that the current car pollution rules established under Biden and stretching out to 2027 “are simply not achievable.” The Trump administration responded by zeroing out any penalties for violations—but the industry is already planning for a post-Trump world where rules could drastically change yet again.

    Because it takes years and billions of dollars to develop new cars that comply with stricter rules, carmakers would prefer if regulations stayed put one way or the other. Every rule change adds time and expense to the development lifecycle, which ultimately gets baked into a car’s price tag.

    Changing rules are also vexing for electric car makers, whose models are gaining traction both in the US and around the world, even as the Trump administration has ended tax incentives for EVs. Trump is making things even more difficult by pulling support for domestic battery production that would help US car companies build electric cars.

    It all adds up to a huge headache for the industry. “Particularly in the last six months, I think ‘chaos’ is a good word because they’re getting hit from every angle,” said David Cooke, senior associate director at the Center for Automotive Research at Ohio State University.

    And all that uncertainty is making cars more expensive to buy and run, with even more expensive long-term consequences for people’s health and the environment.

    How Trump’s Policies Are Costing Drivers More

    As the government relaxes efficiency targets, progress will stall and car buyers will get stuck with cars that cost more to operate.

    Energy Innovation, a think tank, found that repealing tailpipe standards could cost households an extra $310 billion by 2050, mainly through more spending on gasoline. Undoing the standards would also increase air pollution and shrink the job market for US electric vehicle manufacturing due to lower demand.

    The EPA’s fuel mileage rating of a large SUV.

    Photograph: D. Lentz/Getty Images/iStockphoto

    Even the Trump administration’s own analysis of the effects of undoing the EPA’s greenhouse-gas emission regulations found that his moves would drive up gasoline prices due to more fuel consumption from less efficient vehicles.

    “Repealing these standards in particular would set America back decades,” said Sara Baldwin, senior director for electrification at Energy Innovation.

    [ad_2]

    Umair Irfan

    Source link

  • As Typhoon Kalmaegi Wreaks Havoc in Southeast Asia, Scientists Say Rising Temperatures Are to Blame

    [ad_1]

    SINGAPORE (Reuters) -As the year’s deadliest typhoon sweeps into Vietnam after wreaking havoc in the Philippines earlier this week, scientists warn such extreme events can only become more frequent as global temperatures rise.  

    Typhoon Kalmaegi killed at least 188 people across the Philippines and caused untold damage to infrastructure and farmland across the archipelago. The storm then destroyed homes and uprooted trees after landing in central Vietnam late on Thursday.

    Kalmaegi’s path of destruction coincides with a meeting of delegates from more than 190 countries in the rainforest city of Belem in Brazil for the latest round of climate talks. Researchers say the failure of world leaders to control greenhouse gas emissions has led to increasingly violent storms.

    “The sea surface temperatures in both the western North Pacific and over the South China Sea are both exceptionally warm,” said Ben Clarke, an extreme weather researcher at London’s Grantham Institute on Climate Change and Environment. 

    “Kalmaegi will be more powerful and wetter because of these elevated temperatures, and this trend in sea surface temperatures is extremely clearly linked to human-caused global warming.” 

    WARMER WATERS PACK “FUEL” INTO CYCLONES    

    While it is not straightforward to attribute a single weather event to climate change, scientists say that in principle, warmer sea surface temperatures speed up the evaporation process and pack more “fuel” into tropical cyclones.

    “Climate change enhances typhoon intensity primarily by warming ocean surface temperatures and increasing atmospheric moisture content,” said Gianmarco Mengaldo, a researcher at the National University of Singapore.

    “Although this does not imply that every typhoon will become stronger, the likelihood of powerful storms exhibiting greater intensity, with heavier precipitation and stronger winds, rises in a warmer climate,” he added. 

    MORE INTENSE BUT NOT YET MORE FREQUENT

    While the data does not indicate that tropical storms are becoming more frequent, they are certainly becoming more intense, said Mengaldo, who co-authored a study on the role of climate change in September’s Typhoon Ragasa.         

    Last year, the Philippines was hit by six deadly typhoons in the space of a month, and in a rare occurrence in November, saw four tropical cyclones develop at the same time, suggesting that the storms might now be happening over shorter timeframes.

    “Even if total cyclone numbers don’t rise dramatically annually, their seasonal proximity and impact potential could increase,” said Drubajyoti Samanta, a climate scientist at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. 

    “Kalmaegi is a stark reminder of that emerging risk pattern,” he added.       

    BACK-TO-BACK STORMS CAUSING MORE DAMAGE

    While Typhoon Kalmaegi is not technically the most powerful storm to hit Southeast Asia this year, it has added to the accumulated impact of months of extreme weather in the region, said Feng Xiangbo, a tropical storm researcher at Britain’s University of Reading.

    “Back-to-back storms can cause more damage than the sum of individual ones,” he said. 

    “This is because soils are already saturated, rivers are full, and infrastructure is weakened. At this critical time, even a weak storm arriving can act as a tipping point for catastrophic damage.”      

    Both Feng and Mengaldo also warned that more regions could be at risk as storms form in new areas, follow different trajectories and become more intense.

    “Our recent studies have shown that coastal regions affected by tropical storms are expanding significantly, due to the growing footprint of storm surges and ocean waves,” said Feng.

    “This, together with mean sea level rise, poses a severe threat to low-lying areas, particularly in the Philippines and along Vietnam’s shallow coastal shelves.”     

    (Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Saad Sayeed)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

    [ad_2]

    Reuters

    Source link

  • Ballet star Roberto Bolle will headline 2026 Winter Olympics closing ceremony in Verona

    [ad_1]

    VERONA, Italy — Internationally acclaimed ballet star Roberto Bolle will headline the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics closing ceremony, titled “Beauty in Motion,” in Verona’s ancient Roman amphitheater, one of the world’s oldest, organizers announced Thursday.

    The Feb. 22 closing event will pay homage to the city of Verona — which is a UNESCO world heritage site — and the Arena’s role as the venue for a famous summer opera festival, while celebrating athletic excellence and addressing climate change, said Alfredo Accatino, artistic director for the closing ceremony.

    “If the climate continues to change, there won’t be Winter Olympics anymore,’’ Accatino lamented.

    The central stage within the nearly 2,000-year-old Arena will be shaped like a waterdrop, symbolically uniting the mountain venues with the fertile Po River Valley, where Milan and Verona are located, and the Venetian lagoon, Accatino said.

    Bolle, who performed at the opening ceremony for the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, is a familiar sight at the Arena, where he travels each summer with his “Roberto Bolle and Friends” annual gala. He is the only talent announced so far.

    The 2026 Winter Games (Feb. 6-22) will be the first with two official host cities, Milano in Lombardy and Cortina in the Dolomites of Veneto. The opening and closing ceremonies will also be held in two different cities: Milan and Verona

    The addition of Verona, an elegant city of cobbled streets nestled along the winding Adige River and against pre-Alpine mountains, has generated excitement among the delegations more accustomed to sports venues, said Giovanni Malagò, president of the Milan Cortina Foundation local organizing committee.

    “This will be a great advertisement for Verona,” Malagò said. “It is quite obvious that the atmosphere will be completely different from a sports stadium. There is a lot of curiosity to come here.”

    Centrally located among the far-flung Olympic venues, Verona is shaping up to be a base for many Olympic visitors, not just a destination for the Feb. 22 closing ceremony, Mayor Damiano Tommasi said, citing hotel reservation trends.

    Verona is about an hour and 15 minutes by train from Milan, where ice sports are being held, and is just over three hours by car to Bormio, the venue for men’s downhill, and about the same to Cortina, where women’s downhill, curling and bobsled will be held.

    Organizers said they were still finalizing the number of tickets to be sold for the closing ceremony. The Arena di Verona typically holds about 15,000 spectators during opera season, but the closing ceremony capacity will be lower because the central stage will be expanded and many seats are reserved for athletes and official delegations

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Britain’s Prince William Calls for Optimism on Environment at EarthShot Prize Event

    [ad_1]

    RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) -Britain’s Prince William expressed optimism on Wednesday about tackling global environmental challenges at a star-studded event in Rio de Janeiro for the fifth edition of his EarthShot Prize.

    William’s first visit to Latin America comes shortly before Brazil hosts the UN climate summit COP30 next week.

    “I understand that some might feel discouraged in these uncertain times,” William said during the ceremony for the award, founded in 2020 and inspired by a visit to Namibia.

    “I understand that there is still so much to be done. But this is no time for complacency, and the optimism I felt in 2020 remains ardent today.”

    Named in homage to John F. Kennedy’s “moonshot” goal, the award was intended to foster significant environmental progress within a decade that has now reached its midpoint.

    The prize, which aims to find innovations to combat climate change, and tackle other green issues, awards five winners 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) each to drive their projects.

    Pop stars Kylie Minogue and Shawn Mendes, Brazilian musicians Gilberto Gil, Seu Jorge and Anitta, along with former Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel, were among those who appeared or performed at the ceremony.

    British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and London Mayor Sadiq Khan also attended.

    William will attend the UN climate summit in place of his father, King Charles. On his trip, he announced initiatives for Indigenous communities and environmental activists, and visited landmarks in Rio.

    (Reporting by Andre Romani in Sao Paulo and Michael Holden in London; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

    [ad_2]

    Reuters

    Source link

  • EU in Last-Minute Talks to Set New Climate Goal for COP30

    [ad_1]

    BRUSSELS (Reuters) -EU climate ministers will make a last-ditch attempt to pass a new climate change target on Tuesday, in an effort to avoid going to the U.N. COP30 summit in Brazil empty-handed.

    Failure to agree could undermine the European Union’s claims to leadership at the COP30 talks, which will test the will of major economies to keep fighting climate change despite opposition from U.S. President Donald Trump. 

    Countries including China, Britain and Australia have already submitted new climate targets ahead of COP30.

    But the EU, which has some of the world’s most ambitious CO2-cutting policies, has struggled to contain a backlash from industries and governments sceptical that it can afford the measures alongside defence and industrial priorities.

    EU members failed to agree a 2040 climate target in September, leaving them scrambling for a deal days before European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen meets other world leaders at COP30 in Belem, Brazil, on November 6.

    “The geopolitical landscape has rarely been more complex,” EU climate policy chief Wopke Hoekstra told a gathering of climate ministers in Canada on Saturday, adding that he was confident the bloc would approve its new goal. 

    “The European Union will continue to do its utmost, even under these circumstances, in Belem to uphold its commitment to multilateralism and to the Paris Agreement,” he said.

    A MORE FLEXIBLE EU TARGET

    The starting point for talks is a European Commission proposal to cut net EU greenhouse gas emissions by 90% from 1990 levels by 2040, to keep countries on track for net-zero by 2050.

    Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic are among those warning this is too restrictive for domestic industries struggling with high energy costs, cheaper Chinese imports and U.S. tariffs. 

    Others, including the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, cite worsening extreme weather and the need to catch up with China in manufacturing green technologies as reasons for ambitious goals.

    The draft compromise ministers will discuss, seen by Reuters, includes a clause demanded by France allowing a weakening of the 2040 goal in future, if it becomes clear EU forests are not absorbing enough CO2 to meet it. 

    Brussels has also vowed to change other measures to attempt to win buy-in for the climate goal. These include controlling prices in an upcoming carbon market and considering weakening its 2035 combustion engine ban as requested by Germany. 

    A deal on Tuesday will require ministers to agree on the share of the 90% emissions cut countries can cover by buying foreign carbon credits – effectively softening efforts required by domestic industries.

    France has said credits should cover 5%, more than the 3% share originally proposed by the Commission. Other governments argue money would be better spent on supporting European industries than buying foreign CO2 credits.

    Support from at least 15 of the 27 EU members is needed to pass the goal. EU diplomats said on Monday the vote would be tight and could depend on one or two flipping positions.

    Ministers will try first to agree the 2040 goal, and from that derive an emissions pledge for 2035 – which is what the U.N. asked countries to submit ahead of COP30. 

    (Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by Alexander Smith)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

    [ad_2]

    Reuters

    Source link

  • U.S. cattle faces a growing threat from a protected species of vulture spreading north amid climate change — ‘They just basically eat them alive’ | Fortune

    [ad_1]

    Allan Bryant scans the sky as he watches over a minutes-old calf huddled under a tree line with its mother. After a few failed tries, the calf stands on wobbly legs for the first time, looking to nurse.

    Above, a pair of birds circle in the distance. Bryant, hoping they’re not black vultures, is relieved to see they’re only turkey vultures — red-headed and not aggressive.

    “Honestly, the black vulture is one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen,” he said. “They’re easy to hate.”

    Black vultures, scavengers that sometimes attack and kill sick or newborn animals, didn’t used to be a problem here. But now Bryant frequently sees the birds following a birth. He hasn’t lost a calf in several years, but they’ve killed his animals before. So now he takes measures to stop them.

    In some of his fields, he erects a scarecrow of sorts — a dead black vulture — aimed at scaring off the birds. It’s a requirement of his depredation permit through the Kentucky Farm Bureau, which allows him to shoot a few birds a year. The dead bird keeps the live birds away for about a week, but they eventually come back, he said.

    It’s a problem that may grow worse for cattle farmers as the scavenging birds’ range expands northward, in part due to climate change. Lobbying groups have been pushing for legislation that would allow landowners to kill more of these birds, which are protected but not endangered. But experts say more research is needed to better understand how the birds impact livestock and how their removal could affect ecosystems.

    Warmer winters and changing habitats expanding birds’ range

    Black vultures used to mainly live in the southeastern U.S. and farther south in Latin and South America, but over the past century they’ve started to rapidly stretch northward and also west into the desert Southwest, said Andrew Farnsworth, a visiting scientist at Cornell Lab of Ornithology who studies bird migration.

    Warmer winters on average, fueled by climate change, are making it easier for the birds to stay in places that used to be too cold for them. What’s more, the human footprint in suburban and rural areas is enriching their habitat: development means cars, and cars mean roadkill. Cattle farms can also offer a buffet of vulnerable animals for vultures that learn the seasonal calving schedule.

    “If there’s one thing we’ve learned from a lot of different studies of birds, it’s that they are very good at taking advantage of food resources and remembering where those things are,” Farnsworth said.

    Although black vultures are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, they aren’t really a migratory species, he said. Instead, they breed, and some disperse to new areas and settle there.

    How farmers have been dealing with it

    After losing a calf to a black vulture a decade ago, Tom Karr, who raises cattle near Pomeroy, Ohio, tried to move his fall calving season later in the year in hopes the vultures would be gone by then. But that didn’t help — the birds stay all year, he said.

    Until newborn calves are a few days old, “we try to keep them up closer to the barns,” said Joanie Grimes, the owner of a 350-head calf-cow operation in Hillsboro, Ohio. She said they’ve been dealing with the birds for 15 years, but keeping them out of remote fields has helped improve matters.

    Annette Ericksen has noticed the black vultures for several years on her property, Twin Maples Farm in Milton, West Virginia, but they haven’t yet lost any animals to them. When they expect calves and lambs, they move the livestock into a barn, and they also use dogs — Great Pyrenees — trained to patrol the fields and the barnyard for raptors that might hurt the animals.

    The size of their operation makes it easier to account for every animal, but “any loss would be severely detrimental to our small business,” she wrote in an email.

    Local cattlemen’s associations and state farm bureaus often work together to help producers get depredation permits, which allow them to shoot a few birds each year, as long as they keep track of it on paper.

    “The difficulty with that is, if the birds show up, by the time you can get your permit, get all that taken care of, the damage is done,” said Brian Shuter, executive vice president of the Indiana Beef Cattle Association. Farmers said calves can be worth hundreds of dollars or upward of $1,000 or $2,000, depending on the breed.

    A new bill would let farmers shoot the protected birds with less paperwork

    In March, lawmakers in Congress introduced a bill that would let farmers capture or kill any black vulture “in order to prevent death, injury, or destruction to livestock.” Many farmers and others in the cattle industry have supported the move, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in July commended the House Natural Resources Committee for advancing the bill.

    Farnsworth, of the Cornell lab, said it’s not necessarily a good thing to make it easier to kill black vultures, which he said fill “a super important role” in cleaning up “dead stuff.”

    Simply killing the birds, Farnsworth said, may make room for more bothersome predators or scavengers. He said though black vultures can leave behind gory damage, current research doesn’t show that they account for an outsize proportion of livestock deaths.

    But many farmers are unwilling to do nothing.

    “They just basically eat them alive,” Karr said. “It is so disgusting.”

    [ad_2]

    Joshua A. Bickel, Melina Walling, The Associated Press

    Source link

  • Climate Change Made Hurricane Melissa 4 Times More Likely, Study Suggests

    [ad_1]

    This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    Fueled by unusually warm waters, Hurricane Melissa this week turned into one of the strongest Atlantic storms ever recorded. Now a new rapid attribution study suggests human-induced climate change made the deadly tropical cyclone four times more likely.

    Hurricane Melissa collided with Jamaica on Tuesday, wreaking havoc across the island before tearing through nearby Haiti and Cuba. The storm, which reached Category 5, reserved for the hurricanes with the most powerful winds, has killed at least 40 people across the Caribbean so far. Now weakened to a Category 2, it continues its path toward Bermuda, where landfall is likely on Thursday night, according to the National Hurricane Center.

    Early reports of the damage are cataclysmic, particularly in hardest-hit western Jamaica. Winds reaching speeds of 185 miles per hour and torrential rain flattened entire neighborhoods, decimated large swaths of agricultural lands and forced more than 25,000 people—locals and tourists alike—to seek cover in shelters or hotel ballrooms. According to the new attribution study from Imperial College London, climate change ramped up Melissa’s wind speeds by 7 percent, which increased damages by 12 percent.

    Losses could add up to tens of billions of dollars, experts say.

    The findings echo similar reports released earlier this week on how global warming contributed to the likelihood and severity of Hurricane Melissa. Each of the analyses add to a growing body of research showing how ocean warming from climate change is fueling the conditions necessary for stronger tropical storms.

    Hurricane Melissa is “kind of a textbook example of what we expect in terms of how hurricanes respond to a warming climate,” said Brian Soden, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Miami, who was not involved in the recent analyses. “We know that the warming ocean temperatures [are] being driven almost exclusively by increasing greenhouse gases.”

    The storm has disrupted every aspect of life in this part of the Caribbean.

    “There’s been massive dislocation of services. We have people living in shelters across the country,” Dennis Zulu, United Nations resident coordinator in Jamaica, said in a press conference on Wednesday. “What we are seeing in preliminary assessments is a country that’s been devastated to levels never seen before.”

    The Climate Connection

    For the rapid attribution study, researchers at Imperial College used the peer-reviewed Imperial College Storm Model, known as IRIS, which has created a database of millions of synthetic tropical cyclone tracks that can help fill in gaps on how storms operate in the real world.

    The model essentially runs simulations on the likelihood of a given storm’s wind speed—often the most damaging factor—in a pre-industrial climate versus the current climate. Applying IRIS to Hurricane Melissa is how the researchers determined that human-induced warming supercharged the cyclone’s wind speed by 7 percent.

    [ad_2]

    Kiley Price

    Source link

  • Prince William Leaves Andrew Scandal Behind for Trip to Brazil

    [ad_1]

    LONDON (Reuters) -Prince William heads to Brazil next week for the awards ceremony for his multi-million-dollar environmental prize, hoping to refocus attention away from the scandal of his uncle Andrew and back on the royals’ causes.

    William will visit some of Rio de Janeiro’s most famous landmarks on what will be the British heir’s first Latin American trip.

    The aim is to turn the spotlight onto a line-up of environmental projects before the annual awards ceremony for the prince’s Earthshot Prize.

    The visit comes days after King Charles stripped his younger brother of his title of prince and evicted him from his mansion, banishing his sibling from public life to try to prevent any further damage to the royal brand from Andrew’s ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

    During his three-day trip, William will seek to focus on his main philanthropic environmental cause, which aims to find innovations to combat climate change, and awards five winners 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) each to drive their projects.

    William will visit Sugarloaf mountain, the Maracana soccer stadium, the Christ the Redeemer statue and the Copacabana beach where he will play volleyball, a Kensington Palace spokesperson said.

    His wife Kate, who is in remission after cancer treatment, will not be joining him.

    South America is an uncommon destination for the British royals who tend to focus overseas trips on Europe or the foreign realms where the king is head of state, such as Canada.

    William has never been to Brazil or Latin America before, while Charles last went there in 2009.

    This year, the Earthshot events will take place a week before the United Nations COP30 climate summit which is also being held in Brazil and which the prince will attend in place of his father.

    “With its energy, its people and its iconic landscapes it is the perfect place to celebrate amazing environmental innovation and host our biggest and best Earthshot ever,” Jason Knauf, chief executive of the Earthshot Prize, said.

    The winners will be announced at a ceremony on November 5 which will feature a host of celebrities and performances from Australian popstar Kylie Minogue and Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil.

    Organisers say the summit surrounding the event will attract more than 1,000 global leaders, some of the world’s biggest philanthropists along with global mayors and world-leading scientists.

    (Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

    [ad_2]

    Reuters

    Source link

  • Black vultures attack, kill cattle. Climate change one reason they’re spreading north

    [ad_1]

    EMINENCE, Ky. — Allan Bryant scans the sky as he watches over a minutes-old calf huddled under a tree line with its mother. After a few failed tries, the calf stands on wobbly legs for the first time, looking to nurse.

    Above, a pair of birds circle in the distance. Bryant, hoping they’re not black vultures, is relieved to see they’re only turkey vultures — red-headed and not aggressive.

    “Honestly, the black vulture is one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen,” he said. “They’re easy to hate.”

    Black vultures, scavengers that sometimes attack and kill sick or newborn animals, didn’t used to be a problem here. But now Bryant frequently sees the birds following a birth. He hasn’t lost a calf in several years, but they’ve killed his animals before. So now he takes measures to stop them.

    In some of his fields, he erects a scarecrow of sorts — a dead black vulture — aimed at scaring off the birds. It’s a requirement of his depredation permit through the Kentucky Farm Bureau, which allows him to shoot a few birds a year. The dead bird keeps the live birds away for about a week, but they eventually come back, he said.

    It’s a problem that may grow worse for cattle farmers as the scavenging birds’ range expands northward, in part due to climate change. Lobbying groups have been pushing for legislation that would allow landowners to kill more of these birds, which are protected but not endangered. But experts say more research is needed to better understand how the birds impact livestock and how their removal could affect ecosystems.

    Black vultures used to mainly live in the southeastern U.S. and farther south in Latin and South America, but over the past century they’ve started to rapidly stretch northward and also west into the desert Southwest, said Andrew Farnsworth, a visiting scientist at Cornell Lab of Ornithology who studies bird migration.

    Warmer winters on average, fueled by climate change, are making it easier for the birds to stay in places that used to be too cold for them. What’s more, the human footprint in suburban and rural areas is enriching their habitat: development means cars, and cars mean roadkill. Cattle farms can also offer a buffet of vulnerable animals for vultures that learn the seasonal calving schedule.

    “If there’s one thing we’ve learned from a lot of different studies of birds, it’s that they are very good at taking advantage of food resources and remembering where those things are,” Farnsworth said.

    Although black vultures are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, they aren’t really a migratory species, he said. Instead, they breed, and some disperse to new areas and settle there.

    After losing a calf to a black vulture a decade ago, Tom Karr, who raises cattle near Pomeroy, Ohio, tried to move his fall calving season later in the year in hopes the vultures would be gone by then. But that didn’t help — the birds stay all year, he said.

    Until newborn calves are a few days old, “we try to keep them up closer to the barns,” said Joanie Grimes, the owner of a 350-head calf-cow operation in Hillsboro, Ohio. She said they’ve been dealing with the birds for 15 years, but keeping them out of remote fields has helped improve matters.

    Annette Ericksen has noticed the black vultures for several years on her property, Twin Maples Farm in Milton, West Virginia, but they haven’t yet lost any animals to them. When they expect calves and lambs, they move the livestock into a barn, and they also use dogs — Great Pyrenees — trained to patrol the fields and the barnyard for raptors that might hurt the animals.

    The size of their operation makes it easier to account for every animal, but “any loss would be severely detrimental to our small business,” she wrote in an email.

    Local cattlemen’s associations and state farm bureaus often work together to help producers get depredation permits, which allow them to shoot a few birds each year, as long as they keep track of it on paper.

    “The difficulty with that is, if the birds show up, by the time you can get your permit, get all that taken care of, the damage is done,” said Brian Shuter, executive vice president of the Indiana Beef Cattle Association. Farmers said calves can be worth hundreds of dollars or upward of $1,000 or $2,000, depending on the breed.

    In March, lawmakers in Congress introduced a bill that would let farmers capture or kill any black vulture “in order to prevent death, injury, or destruction to livestock.” Many farmers and others in the cattle industry have supported the move, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in July commended the House Natural Resources Committee for advancing the bill.

    Farnsworth, of the Cornell lab, said it’s not necessarily a good thing to make it easier to kill black vultures, which he said fill “a super important role” in cleaning up “dead stuff.”

    Simply killing the birds, Farnsworth said, may make room for more bothersome predators or scavengers. He said though black vultures can leave behind gory damage, current research doesn’t show that they account for an outsize proportion of livestock deaths.

    But many farmers are unwilling to do nothing.

    “They just basically eat them alive,” Karr said. “It is so disgusting.”

    ___

    Follow Melina Walling on X @MelinaWalling and Bluesky @melinawalling.bsky.social. Follow Joshua A. Bickel on Instagram, Bluesky and X @joshuabickel.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Black Vultures Attack and Kill Cattle. Climate Change Is One Reason They’re Spreading North

    [ad_1]

    EMINENCE, Ky. (AP) — Allan Bryant scans the sky as he watches over a minutes-old calf huddled under a tree line with its mother. After a few failed tries, the calf stands on wobbly legs for the first time, looking to nurse.

    Above, a pair of birds circle in the distance. Bryant, hoping they’re not black vultures, is relieved to see they’re only turkey vultures — red-headed and not aggressive.

    “Honestly, the black vulture is one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen,” he said. “They’re easy to hate.”

    Black vultures, scavengers that sometimes attack and kill sick or newborn animals, didn’t used to be a problem here. But now Bryant frequently sees the birds following a birth. He hasn’t lost a calf in several years, but they’ve killed his animals before. So now he takes measures to stop them.

    In some of his fields, he erects a scarecrow of sorts — a dead black vulture — aimed at scaring off the birds. It’s a requirement of his depredation permit through the Kentucky Farm Bureau, which allows him to shoot a few birds a year. The dead bird keeps the live birds away for about a week, but they eventually come back, he said.

    It’s a problem that may grow worse for cattle farmers as the scavenging birds’ range expands northward, in part due to climate change. Lobbying groups have been pushing for legislation that would allow landowners to kill more of these birds, which are protected but not endangered. But experts say more research is needed to better understand how the birds impact livestock and how their removal could affect ecosystems.


    Warmer winters and changing habitats expanding birds’ range

    Black vultures used to mainly live in the southeastern U.S. and farther south in Latin and South America, but over the past century they’ve started to rapidly stretch northward and also west into the desert Southwest, said Andrew Farnsworth, a visiting scientist at Cornell Lab of Ornithology who studies bird migration.

    Warmer winters on average, fueled by climate change, are making it easier for the birds to stay in places that used to be too cold for them. What’s more, the human footprint in suburban and rural areas is enriching their habitat: development means cars, and cars mean roadkill. Cattle farms can also offer a buffet of vulnerable animals for vultures that learn the seasonal calving schedule.

    “If there’s one thing we’ve learned from a lot of different studies of birds, it’s that they are very good at taking advantage of food resources and remembering where those things are,” Farnsworth said.

    Although black vultures are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, they aren’t really a migratory species, he said. Instead, they breed, and some disperse to new areas and settle there.


    How farmers have been dealing with it

    After losing a calf to a black vulture a decade ago, Tom Karr, who raises cattle near Pomeroy, Ohio, tried to move his fall calving season later in the year in hopes the vultures would be gone by then. But that didn’t help — the birds stay all year, he said.

    Until newborn calves are a few days old, “we try to keep them up closer to the barns,” said Joanie Grimes, the owner of a 350-head calf-cow operation in Hillsboro, Ohio. She said they’ve been dealing with the birds for 15 years, but keeping them out of remote fields has helped improve matters.

    Annette Ericksen has noticed the black vultures for several years on her property, Twin Maples Farm in Milton, West Virginia, but they haven’t yet lost any animals to them. When they expect calves and lambs, they move the livestock into a barn, and they also use dogs — Great Pyrenees — trained to patrol the fields and the barnyard for raptors that might hurt the animals.

    The size of their operation makes it easier to account for every animal, but “any loss would be severely detrimental to our small business,” she wrote in an email.

    Local cattlemen’s associations and state farm bureaus often work together to help producers get depredation permits, which allow them to shoot a few birds each year, as long as they keep track of it on paper.

    “The difficulty with that is, if the birds show up, by the time you can get your permit, get all that taken care of, the damage is done,” said Brian Shuter, executive vice president of the Indiana Beef Cattle Association. Farmers said calves can be worth hundreds of dollars or upward of $1,000 or $2,000, depending on the breed.


    A new bill would let farmers shoot the protected birds with less paperwork

    In March, lawmakers in Congress introduced a bill that would let farmers capture or kill any black vulture “in order to prevent death, injury, or destruction to livestock.” Many farmers and others in the cattle industry have supported the move, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in July commended the House Natural Resources Committee for advancing the bill.

    Farnsworth, of the Cornell lab, said it’s not necessarily a good thing to make it easier to kill black vultures, which he said fill “a super important role” in cleaning up “dead stuff.”

    Simply killing the birds, Farnsworth said, may make room for more bothersome predators or scavengers. He said though black vultures can leave behind gory damage, current research doesn’t show that they account for an outsize proportion of livestock deaths.

    But many farmers are unwilling to do nothing.

    “They just basically eat them alive,” Karr said. “It is so disgusting.”

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

    [ad_2]

    Associated Press

    Source link

  • Fact vs. Fiction: Did Bill Gates Admit He Was Wrong About Climate Change?

    [ad_1]

    Posted By: Media Bias Fact Check

    Claim by President Donald Trump:

    President Donald J. Trump claimed on Truth Social that he “won the War on the Climate Change Hoax,” asserting that Bill Gates “finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue.”

    Explanation:

    This claim is false. Bill Gates has not reversed his long-standing acknowledgment of climate change. His recent climate memo and multiple interviews reaffirm that climate change is real and a serious global threat. However, he urges leaders to focus more on improving human welfare alongside reducing emissions. Gates wrote that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise,” but emphasized the need for continued innovation to achieve net-zero emissions and protect vulnerable populations.

    Trump’s statement misrepresents Gates’ nuanced position, which calls for balancing emissions goals with efforts to fight poverty, disease, and malnutrition—not denying climate science. No credible evidence supports the claim that Gates recanted his belief in human-caused climate change.

    Conclusion:

    Fact or Fiction? Fiction. Bill Gates did not admit he was wrong about climate change. He continues to support climate action while advocating for broader humanitarian priorities.

    Read More

    Subscribe With Email

    Join 27K other subscribers

    [ad_2]

    Media Bias Fact Check

    Source link

  • Young Canadians sue CPP Investments over climate risks – MoneySense

    [ad_1]

    The four allege in a lawsuit filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Monday that the investment manager for the Canada Pension Plan is breaching its duty to invest in their best interest, and subjecting their contributions to undue risk of loss by its approach. “I do not want to be suing my pension manager, but I want to retire on a stable pension into a livable future,” said 20-year-old Aliya Hirji, one of the four plaintiffs, at a news conference in Toronto.

    CPP faces lawsuit on fossil fuel ties

    The lawsuit, filed with the support of Ecojustice and Goldblatt Partners LLP, claims CPP Investments is drastically underestimating the financial implications of climate change, as well as worsening its harms by continuing to invest in the expansion of fossil fuel production.

    Karine Peloffy, a lawyer and sustainable finance lead at Ecojustice, said the lawsuit will be a legal test on how the fund should approach climate risks, given its obligations. “It is the first time in any court anywhere that future beneficiaries will argue that one of the largest investors is breaching its duty of intergenerational equity,” Peloffy said.

    CPP Investments spokesman Michel Leduc said the fund will address the matter through the courts, if necessary, but that it has a rigorous approach to integrating climate risk as one of many material factors it considers. “Our focus remains steadfast on integrating climate-related considerations into our investment activity,” he said.

    CPP drops net-zero target but defends approach

    The lawsuit comes after CPP Investments quietly dropped its 2050 net-zero target for carbon emissions earlier this year, but Leduc said the change in language didn’t change the fund’s focus on climate change. He said climate risks are one of many risk areas the fund has to manage as it invests to maximize long-term investment returns without undue risk.

    Leduc said the fund will push back against efforts that it sees as limiting its ability to meet those obligations. “An action against CPP Investments, and our efforts to maintain the sustainability of the Canada Pension Plan, is an action against the retirement security of 22 million Canadians,” Leduc said.

    Travis Olson, another one of the plaintiffs, said Monday that he doesn’t believe it is meeting those obligations when managing investments the fund will one day rely on to help pay his benefits in retirement.

    “My pension manager’s practices are incompatible with an economically stable, climate-safe future that my generation is relying on,” the 22-year-old Olson said. “I’m looking forward to the day our pension manager stops betting against the world my generation will inherit, and until they do so voluntarily, we’re asking the courts to step in and protect our contributions.”

    Article Continues Below Advertisement


    Get free MoneySense financial tips, news & advice in your inbox.

    Read more news:



    About The Canadian Press


    About The Canadian Press

    The Canadian Press is Canada’s trusted news source and leader in providing real-time stories. We give Canadians an authentic, unbiased source, driven by truth, accuracy and timeliness.

    [ad_2]

    The Canadian Press

    Source link

  • Young Canadians sue CPP Investments over climate risks – MoneySense

    [ad_1]

    The four allege in a lawsuit filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Monday that the investment manager for the Canada Pension Plan is breaching its duty to invest in their best interest, and subjecting their contributions to undue risk of loss by its approach. “I do not want to be suing my pension manager, but I want to retire on a stable pension into a livable future,” said 20-year-old Aliya Hirji, one of the four plaintiffs, at a news conference in Toronto.

    CPP faces lawsuit on fossil fuel ties

    The lawsuit, filed with the support of Ecojustice and Goldblatt Partners LLP, claims CPP Investments is drastically underestimating the financial implications of climate change, as well as worsening its harms by continuing to invest in the expansion of fossil fuel production.

    Karine Peloffy, a lawyer and sustainable finance lead at Ecojustice, said the lawsuit will be a legal test on how the fund should approach climate risks, given its obligations. “It is the first time in any court anywhere that future beneficiaries will argue that one of the largest investors is breaching its duty of intergenerational equity,” Peloffy said.

    CPP Investments spokesman Michel Leduc said the fund will address the matter through the courts, if necessary, but that it has a rigorous approach to integrating climate risk as one of many material factors it considers. “Our focus remains steadfast on integrating climate-related considerations into our investment activity,” he said.

    CPP drops net-zero target but defends approach

    The lawsuit comes after CPP Investments quietly dropped its 2050 net-zero target for carbon emissions earlier this year, but Leduc said the change in language didn’t change the fund’s focus on climate change. He said climate risks are one of many risk areas the fund has to manage as it invests to maximize long-term investment returns without undue risk.

    Leduc said the fund will push back against efforts that it sees as limiting its ability to meet those obligations. “An action against CPP Investments, and our efforts to maintain the sustainability of the Canada Pension Plan, is an action against the retirement security of 22 million Canadians,” Leduc said.

    Travis Olson, another one of the plaintiffs, said Monday that he doesn’t believe it is meeting those obligations when managing investments the fund will one day rely on to help pay his benefits in retirement.

    “My pension manager’s practices are incompatible with an economically stable, climate-safe future that my generation is relying on,” the 22-year-old Olson said. “I’m looking forward to the day our pension manager stops betting against the world my generation will inherit, and until they do so voluntarily, we’re asking the courts to step in and protect our contributions.”

    Article Continues Below Advertisement


    Get free MoneySense financial tips, news & advice in your inbox.

    Read more news:



    About The Canadian Press


    About The Canadian Press

    The Canadian Press is Canada’s trusted news source and leader in providing real-time stories. We give Canadians an authentic, unbiased source, driven by truth, accuracy and timeliness.

    [ad_2]

    The Canadian Press

    Source link

  • Bill Gates Just Changed His Tune on Climate Change. Here’s Why

    [ad_1]

    Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates just wrote a surprising new blog post on climate change. The upshot of the lengthy memo goes something like this: Climate change is likely to hurt the world’s most vulnerable—but won’t pose a catastrophic risk to civilization, so it’s time to focus on quality of life rather than emissions cuts or temperature rise.

    The blog was penned in the run up to the United Nations’ global climate conference COP30, which will take place in Brazil in mid-November, and represents a different tone from Gates’s past commentary on climate change. It also comes amid sweeping cuts to foreign aid and open hostility about climate change from the Trump administration.

    “Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been,” Gates wrote. “Understanding this will let us focus our limited resources on interventions that will have the greatest impact for the most vulnerable people.”

    The billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder has long been a major advocate for climate change mitigation and investment in related technologies. He has invested billions in climate-related causes through his Gates Foundation, which he announced earlier this year will sunset in 2045. (In a blog post on the subject, he wrote that he wanted to accelerate his philanthropy in an effort to give away a bulk of his fortune within 20 years, rather than extending the life of the organization for decades after his death.)

    He also co-founded Breakthrough Energy in 2015 to find, incubate, and invest in promising companies and projects. The venture capital arm of the organization, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, counts as portfolio companies such businesses as battery recycling company Redwood Materials, sustainable aviation company ZeroAvia, and nuclear fusion company Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The organization has not been immune from broader economic and political changes: It cut “dozens” of staff, according to March reporting from The New York Times.

    In his post, Gates, who is 70, wrote that the “doomsday view of climate change,” which sees it as having the potential to cause civilizational collapse, is not actually correct. He added that “people will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future,” thanks to projections that show greenhouse gas emissions declining in coming years., and that “innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further” with supportive policy and investment.

    “Unfortunately, the doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world,” he added. “It’s not too late to adopt a different view and adjust our strategies for dealing with climate change.”

    That “different view” entails foregoing measuring success in terms of temperature rise, and instead looking at the impact of climate change on human welfare. He called on COP30 attendees to adopt that approach, and outlined two priorities when thinking about climate change. The first entails investing in innovation to eliminate the premium on pricing for cleaner technologies, particularly in difficult-to-abate sectors like manufacturing, agriculture, and transportation. Second, he emphasized using data to inform which investments are doing the most to save lives and improve quality of life for the most people—and then focus on those.

    “Vaccines are the undisputed champion of lives saved per dollar spent,” he wrote, as an example. “And vaccines become even more important in a warming world because children who aren’t dying of measles or whooping cough will be more likely to survive when a heat wave hits or a drought threatens the local food supply.”

    The World Meteorological Organization confirmed 2024 was the hottest year on record with global mean temperatures exceeding the 1.5 degrees celsius benchmark established in the 2015 Paris Agreement. And U.N. secretary general António Guterres said last week that overshooting the temperature goal “is now inevitable,” the BBC reported. Given those developments, stepping away from metrics on climate progress such as temperature rise and emissions cuts may seem drastic. But Gates’s repositioning comes with some key context. 

    Vaccine access has always been a top priority for Gates. But earlier this year, the Elon Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and cut future funding for Gavi, a global vaccine alliance responsible for vaccinating more than one billion children. Gates discussed his anxieties over the reduction in funding in his blog.

    “COP30 is taking place at a time when it’s especially important to get the most value out of every dollar spent on helping the poorest,” he wrote. “The pool of money available to help them—which was already less than 1 percent of rich countries’ budgets at its highest level—is shrinking as rich countries cut their aid budgets and low-income countries are burdened by debt.”

    Furthermore, the Trump administration has made no secret of its hostility toward climate change, but continues to position itself as favoring reindustrialization and innovation. Biden-era bills like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, however, have demonstrated that clean energy and climate tech go hand-in-hand with those objectives.

    Another priority of the Trump administration, noted in an executive order the president signed on his first day in office, is “unleashing American energy.”  While stopping short of endorsing fossil fuels, Gates did echo some of Trump’s points when he wrote that “from the standpoint of improving lives, using more energy is a good thing, because it’s so closely correlated with economic growth.” He did, however, temper it by noting that “what’s good for prosperity is bad for the environment,” given that the world still doesn’t have the means to meet growing energy demand without also spiking emissions.

    “We will have the tools we need if we focus on innovation. With the right investments and policies in place, over the next ten years we will have new affordable zero-carbon technologies ready to roll out at scale,” he wrote.

    Speaking of innovation, Gates also mentioned the tech issue of the moment: AI. He wrote that he feels confident that AI will accelerate progress and innovation for companies working on climate solutions.

    Gates’s shift in tone may be strategic for another reason, as well. Research has increasingly found that young people respond better when climate change is reframed in a more positive, solutions-oriented way. A  2019 research paper identified three different mechanisms of coping with climate anxiety. Whereas one strategy entailed withdrawing from climate discourse in favor of emotional self-soothing, two other strategies—problem-focused and meaning-focused coping—were found to lead more often to climate action. Meaning-focused coping in particular was associated with resilience and entailed a reframing of the problem in a more positive light and placing trust that society will do its part.

    Experts seem divided on the memo. The director of Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development told ABC News the memo was “pointless, vague, unhelpful and confusing.” A Stanford University climate scientist said it is worth considering whether climate change discourse is too pessimistic, but that stakeholders should continue to think longterm about investment in climate change mitigation. And a Princeton expert told ABC that humanity’s welfare can be the top priority in climate-related policy without being the only one.

    Gates told The New York Times that while he expects the blog to be controversial, he doesn’t see it as a reversal. And in bold font, for emphasis, he wrote: “To be clear: Climate change is a very important problem. It needs to be solved, along with other problems like malaria and malnutrition. Every tenth of a degree of heating that we prevent is hugely beneficial because a stable climate makes it easier to improve people’s lives.”

    [ad_2]

    Chloe Aiello

    Source link

  • Study finds EVs quickly overcome their energy-intensive build to be cleaner than gas cars

    [ad_1]

    DETROIT — Making electric vehicles and their batteries is a dirty process that uses a lot of energy. But a new study says that EVs quickly make up for that with less overall emissions through two years of use than a gas-powered vehicle.

    The study also estimated that gas-powered vehicles cause at least twice as much environmental damage over their lifetimes as EVs, and said the benefits of EVs can be expected to increase in coming decades as clean sources of power, such as solar and wind, are brought onto the grid.

    The work by researchers from Northern Arizona University and Duke University, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS Climate, offers insight into a transportation sector that makes up a big part of U.S. emissions. It also comes as some EV skeptics have raised concerns about whether the environmental impact of battery production, including mining, makes it worthwhile to switch to electric.

    “While there is a bigger carbon footprint in the very short term because of the manufacturing process in creating the batteries for electric vehicles, very quickly you come out ahead in CO2 emissions by year three and then for all of the rest of the vehicle lifetime, you’re far ahead and so cumulatively much lower carbon footprint,” said Drew Shindell, an earth science professor at Duke University and study co-author.

    The researchers evaluated several harmful air pollutants monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as emissions data, to compare the relative impact over time of EVs and internal combustion engines on air quality and climate change.

    Their analysis said that EVs produce 30% higher carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline vehicles in their first two years. That can be attributed to the energy-intensive production and manufacturing processes involved in mining lithium for EV batteries.

    They also sought to account for how the U.S. energy system might develop in coming years, assuming growth in clean energy. And they modeled four different scenarios for EV adoption, ranging from the lowest — a 31% share of vehicle sales — to the highest, 75% of sales, by 2050. (EV sales accounted for about 8% of new vehicle sales in the U.S. in 2024.)

    The researchers said the average of those four models found that for each additional kilowatt hour of lithium-ion battery output, carbon dioxide emissions drop by an average of 220 kilograms (485 pounds) in 2030, and another 127 kilograms (280 pounds) in 2050.

    The consistent decrease in CO2 emissions from EVs is “not only driven by the on-road vehicles, but also reduction that has been brought due to electricity production,” said lead author Pankaj Sadavarte, a postdoctoral researcher at Northern Arizona University.

    Greg Keoleian, a University of Michigan professor of sustainable systems who wasn’t involved in the research, called it a “valuable study” that echoes other findings and “confirms the environmental and economic benefits” of EVs.

    “Accelerating the adoption of battery electric vehicles is a key strategy for decarbonizing the transportation sector which will reduce future damages and costs of climate change,” he said.

    Shindell, the Duke researcher, said the grid will evolve to have more solar and wind power.

    “When you add a bunch of electric vehicles, nobody’s going to build new coal-fired power plants to run these things because coal is really expensive compared to renewables,” he said. “So the grid just overall becomes much cleaner in both the terms of carbon emissions for climate change, and for air pollution.”

    Outside experts agreed — as long as the policy landscape supports it. That hasn’t been the case under President Donald Trump, who has worked to boost fossil fuels and restrain solar and wind power development.

    “The great news is the rest of the world isn’t slowing down in terms of its embrace of this technology,” said Ellen Kennedy, principal for carbon-free transportation at RMI, a clean energy nonprofit. As for the U.S., she said, “I think it’s important to keep in mind states and local governments, there’s a lot that’s happening on those fronts.”

    One thing the study didn’t address was recycling or disposal of batteries at the end of their life. Kennedy said battery recycling will improve, helping to address one of the environmental impacts of their production.

    The study comes at a notable time given the challenges that EVs face in the U.S.

    EVs have seen more interest in recent years as an alternative to gas-powered cars and trucks — particularly as they become more affordable and charging infrastructure becomes more available.

    But growth has slowed amid shifting federal policy toward EVs and an industry step back from ambitious EV production promises.

    Former President Joe Biden set a target for 50% of all new vehicle sales in the U.S. to be electric by 2030. But Trump reversed that policy, and Congress has terminated federal tax credits for an EV purchase. The administration has also targeted vehicle pollution rules that would encourage greater uptake of EVs in the U.S., and the president has attempted to halt a nationwide EV charging buildout.

    “The study is important to show how really misguided the current administration’s policies are,” Shindell said. “If we want to protect us from climate change and from the very clear and local damage from poor air quality, this is a really clear way to do it: Incentivize the switch from internal combustion engines to EVs.”

    ___

    Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

    ___

    Read more of AP’s climate coverage.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Humanity is on path toward ‘climate chaos,’ scientists warn

    [ad_1]

    Industries and individuals around the world burned record amounts of oil, gas and coal last year, releasing more greenhouse gases than ever before, a group of leading scientists said in a new report, warning that humanity is hurtling toward “climate chaos.”

    The surge in global use of fossil fuels in 2024 contributed to extreme weather and devastating disasters including heat waves, storms, floods and wildfires.

    “The planet’s vital signs are flashing red,” the scientists wrote in their annual report on the state of the climate. “The window to prevent the worst outcomes is rapidly closing.”

    Some of the most alarming of Earth’s “vital signs,” the researchers said, include record heat in the oceans ravaging coral reefs, rapidly shrinking ice sheets and increasing losses of forests burned in fires around the world. They said the extreme intensity of Hurricane Melissa this week is another sign of how the altered climate is threatening lives and communities on an unprecedented scale.

    “The climate crisis has reached a really dangerous stage,” said William Ripple, the report’s co-lead author and a professor at Oregon State University. “It is vital that we limit future warming as rapidly as possible.”

    There is still time to limit the damage, Ripple said. It means switching to cleanly made electricity, clean transportation, fewer beef and dairy cows and other sources of harmful gases. These transitions are happening in some places, though not nearly fast enough.

    For example, fossil fuel use actually fell in China in the first half of this year, a remarkable change for a country that remains the world’s biggest climate polluter. Renewable energy is being built out at a furious pace there, dwarfing installation in rest of the world. And in California, clean energy provided two-thirds of electricity in 2023.

    Yet total use of fossil fuels rose 1.5% in 2024, the researchers said, citing data from the Energy Institute. Energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide and other planet-heating gases also reached an all-time high — exactly the opposite of what needs to be happening to address climate change.

    The report notes that hotter temperatures are contributing to growing electricity demand.

    “Avoiding every fraction of a degree of warming is critically important,” the scientists wrote. “We are entering a period where only bold, coordinated action can prevent catastrophic outcomes.”

    The report, published Wednesday in the journal BioScience, is the sixth annual assessment that Ripple and his colleagues have compiled since they wrote a 2020 paper declaring a climate emergency — a statement that more than 15,800 scientists have signed in support.

    The scientists said the current pace of warming greatly increases the risks of crossing dangerous climate tipping points, including vicious cycles such as the collapse of ice sheets, thawing of carbon-rich permafrost and widespread dieback of forests.

    Ripple and his colleagues stressed that adopting solutions now to reduce emissions can swiftly bring benefits and that these solutions will be far less expensive than dealing with the consequences of uncontrolled climate change.

    Efforts by President Trump and his administration to boost production of oil, gas and coal seriously threaten to slow the shift toward clean energy, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

    He and co-author Peter Hotez argue in the recent book “Science Under Siege” that other nations must take on greater leadership now that the U.S. and other oil-promoting governments are working to block action on climate change.

    Other scientists who helped write the report said the Trump administration is turning a blind eye to threats including sea-level rise, worsening droughts and wildfires, and diminished agricultural output.

    “It’s a scandal that the U.S. is pulling back from any efforts to address environmental challenges,” said Peter Gleick, co-founder and senior fellow of the Pacific Institute, a think tank in Oakland. “The rest of the world should ignore efforts by the U.S. to delay progress on these problems … and I’m hopeful that other countries will continue to step up.”

    The upcoming United Nations climate conference in Brazil in November could be a turning point if countries commit to bold and transformative changes, Ripple said.

    Solutions must involve not only phasing out fossil fuels, the scientists said, but also addressing the fact that people are using up resources faster than nature can replenish them. Researchers, they noted, have estimated that two-thirds of the warming since 1990 is attributable to the wealthiest 10% of the world’s people because of “high-consumption lifestyles, high per capita fossil fuel use, and investments.”

    The scientists called for changes including “reducing overconsumption” among the wealthy, protecting and restoring ecosystems, and shifting away from meat-heavy diets to more plant-based foods.

    “It’s not just about cutting emissions. Dealing with climate change requires more,” Ripple said. “It calls for deep, systemic change in how societies value nature, design economies, consume resources and define progress.”

    [ad_2]

    Ian James

    Source link

  • Hurricane Melissa Makes Landfall in Cuba, NHC Says

    [ad_1]

    (Reuters) -Hurricane Melissa made landfall on the southern coast of eastern Cuba on Wednesday as a category three hurricane, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in its latest advisory.

    Melissa was located about 60 miles (95 km) west-southwest of Guantanamo, Cuba, with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (195 kph), the Miami-based forecaster said.

    (Reporting by Anmol Choubey and Ishaan Arora in BengaluruEditing by David Goodman)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

    [ad_2]

    Reuters

    Source link