Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!
You are here
Climate
January Was Hottest January on Record, Scientists Report
Urgent action needed to ensure UK food security, report warns
The UK’s food supply has been threatened by recent events, such as the war in Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic
Urgent action is needed to secure the UK’s food supply in the face of climate change-induced extreme weather, the imposition of tariffs and global insecurity, a report has warned.
Days after the US president, Donald Trump, warned Europe would be next for tariffs on trade after he imposed tax levies on Canada, China and Mexico, the report said the UK’s post-second world war food system was no longer fit for purpose, and the country’s food security was in a precarious state.
Continue reading...On the edge: Massachusetts home at peril of tumbling into bay from erosion
Multimillion-dollar home perched at edge of Cape Cod Bay in Wellfleet affected by erosion accelerated by climate crisis
The waters of Cape Cod Bay are coming for the big brown house perched on the edge of a sandy bluff high above the beach. It’s just a matter of when.
Erosion has marched right up to the concrete footings of the multimillion-dollar Massachusetts home where it overlooks the bay. Massive sliding doors that used to open onto a wide deck, complete with a hot tub, are now barricaded by thin wooden slats that prevent anyone from stepping through and falling 25ft to the beach below.
Continue reading...Doge staffers enter Noaa headquarters and incite reports of cuts and threats
Members reportedly sought access to IT systems at agency that Project 2025 has called ‘harmful to US prosperity’
Staffers with Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) reportedly entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the Department of Commerce in Washington DC today, inciting concerns of downsizing at the agency.
“They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former Noaa official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire. “They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot of which is confidential information.”
Continue reading...Minister promises to spend £250m to top up England’s flood defences
Labour pledges to protect 66,500 more properties, criticising previous Tory efforts
Ministers are topping up flood defence investment in England to a “record” £2.65bn, after accusing the previous government of “putting lives at risk” by under-spending.
An extra £250m is being pledged on top of the £2.4bn previously announced, to shore up defences and protect an extra 66,500 properties from flooding over a two-year period, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said.
Continue reading...Trump Rehires Neil Jacobs, Former NOAA Chief Involved in ‘Sharpiegate’
Deaths of 30,000 fish off WA coast made more likely by climate change, research finds
Analysis drawing on satellite data and 13 climate models concludes that global heating makes marine heatwaves 20 times more likely
- Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates
- Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
Marine heatwaves linked to the deaths of 30,000 fish off the Western Australia coast were up to 100 times more likely to occur because of climate change, new research has found.
Waters off WA have been affected by prolonged marine heatwaves since September.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email
Continue reading...E.P.A. Demotes Career Employees Overseeing Science, Enforcement and More
How Trump’s Trade War Could Affect Climate Change
Climate change target of 2C is ‘dead’, says renowned climate scientist
Prof James Hansen says pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, though other scientists disagree
The pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, according to renowned climate scientist Prof James Hansen, who said the international 2C target is “dead”.
A new analysis by Hansen and colleagues concludes that both the impact of recent cuts in sun-blocking shipping pollution, which has raised temperatures, and the sensitivity of the climate to increasing fossil fuels emissions are greater than thought.
Continue reading...Rightwing MEPs threaten huge funding freeze for environmental NGOs
Freeze to EU’s LIFE programme funding would deprive 30 NGOs of up to 70% of annual incomes
Several environmental NGOs could be effectively shut down in Europe, if a defunding push by rightwing MEPs is successful, campaigners say.
At the same time that centre and far right MEPs are revving up strategies to defang, deregulate or decapitate the European Green Deal, an EU plan to cut emissions to net zero by 2050, a proposed funding freeze in the European Parliament would weaken green groups.
Continue reading...Temperatures at north pole 20C above average and beyond ice melting point
Scientists say unusually mild temperatures linked to low-pressure system over Iceland directing strong flow of warm air towards north pole
Temperatures at the north pole soared more than 20C above average on Sunday, crossing the threshold for ice to melt.
Temperatures north of Svalbard in Norway had already risen to 18C hotter than the 1991–2020 average on Saturday, according to models from weather agencies in Europe and the US, with actual temperatures close to ice’s melting point of 0C. By Sunday, the temperature anomaly had risen to more than 20C.
Continue reading...Scientists brace ‘for the worst’ as Trump purges climate mentions from websites
Trump administration pulling references online ‘won’t make crisis’ stop impacting Americans’ lives, say experts
Donald Trump’s administration has started to remove or downgrade mentions of the climate crisis across the US government, with the websites of several major departments pulling down references to anything related to the climate crisis. Climate scientists said they were braced “for the worst”.
A major climate portal on the Department of Defense’s website has been scrapped, as has the main climate change section on the site of the Department of State. A climate change page on the White House’s website no longer exists, nor does climate content provided by the US agriculture department, including information that provides vulnerability assessments for wildfires.
Continue reading...E.P.A. Demotes Career Employees Overseeing Science, Enforcement and More
Chris Wright Is Confirmed as Secretary of Energy
US Senate confirms fracking CEO Chris Wright to be Trump’s energy secretary
Liberty Energy executive, who has called climate change activists alarmist, confirmed in vote of 59-38
The US Senate on Monday confirmed Chris Wright, a fracking executive, to be Donald Trump’s energy secretary.
The vote was 59-38.
Continue reading...Over 1,000 EPA Workers on Climate Change and More Could Be Fired ‘Immediately’
Australian nature: if our laws don’t radically change, environmental degradation will continue | Adam Morton
This country has a long history of taking its unique wildlife and landscapes for granted – but what has happened in this term of parliament is remarkable
- Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates
- Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
There is something significant missing from most of the political and media discussion about the Australian government’s promised, and now abandoned, nature protection laws: the environment. Logically, it should be a focus of the debate. In practice, it barely gets a look-in.
This would be an extraordinary state of affairs were it not so familiar. Australia has a long history of taking its unique wildlife and landscapes for granted, stretching back to European colonisation. But what has happened in this term of parliament is a pretty remarkable extension of that.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email
Continue reading...The New Evidence Climate Change Will Upend American Homeownership
Trump has brought much-needed attention to a site of great tragedy: the Gulf of Mexico | Greg Grandin
Environmental disasters have plagued the water body for decades. Now the region is thrust in the global spotlight
The enormous semi-enclosed bay, its waters flanked by the Florida and Yucatán peninsulas and partially blockaded by Cuba, has been called the Golfo de México for centuries, a name that first appeared on a world map in 1550. And for centuries the name bothered no one.
Thomas Jefferson used the name without shame, even as he, Donald Trump-like, imagined dominating nearby nations. If the US could take Cuba, Jefferson wrote in 1823, it would control the “Gulf of Mexico and the countries and isthmus bordering on it”. Country music stars, no less than founding fathers, liked the romance of the place. Tracy Lawrence dreams of a Gulf of Mexico filled with whiskey. Johnny Cash wanted to dump his blues down in the Gulf.
Continue reading...