Feed aggregator

Study says funding to cope with climate breakdown needed five years earlier than expected

Poor countries need $1tn a year in climate finance by 2030, five years earlier than rich countries are likely to agree to at UN climate talks, a new study has found.

Waiting until 2035 to receive the funding, which is to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with extreme weather, would place damaging burdens on vulnerable countries, warned the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, a group of leading economists.

Continue reading...

The climate crisis created the setting for Trump’s economy-first win and it’s the global south that will suffer most

Donald Trump’s election is a triumph for the politics of the doomsday bunker, which is bad news for the world’s environment.

This is the idea that in an age of climate disruption, nature extinction and ever wider social inequality, the best chance of survival for those who can afford it is to construct a personal shelter, where they can keep the desperate masses at bay. It is survival of the richest.

Continue reading...

One expert says climate targets can seem abstract but matter because they serve as an ‘investment signal’ to cashed up investors

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

The UK’s announcement of an 81% emissions cut below 1990 levels by 2035 shows the Australian government should set an ambitious climate target that will quickly drive investment and create clean industries, experts say.

The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, was praised by campaigners and experts after confirming the pledge at the Cop29 UN climate summit in Azerbaijan, though they said it would need to be backed by clear plans. The UK is one of the first larger countries to announce a 2035 target before a UN deadline next February.

Continue reading...

The U.N.’s annual climate conference has swelled over three decades, with governments, fossil fuel interests and others vying for influence.

Trump’s election merely confirms a shift that’s been happening for years.

Exclusive: Mia Mottley, who has championed climate action, says she would seek common ground with US president-elect

Mia Mottley, the climate-championing prime minister of Barbados, has invited Donald Trump to a face-to-face meeting where she would seek “common ground” and persuade him that climate action was in his own interests.

“Let us find a common purpose in saving the planet and saving livelihoods,” she told the Guardian at the UN’s Cop29 climate summit in Azerbaijan. “We are human beings and we have the capacity to meet face-to-face, in spite of our differences. We want humanity to survive. And the evidence [of the climate crisis] we are seeing almost weekly now.”

Continue reading...

Move adds to concerns about the stability of the Paris agreement after the election in the US of Donald Trump

Argentinian negotiators representing the government of the climate science denier Javier Milei have been ordered to withdraw from the Cop29 summit after only three days, adding to concerns about the stability of the Paris agreement.

More than 80 representatives from the South American country are in Baku, Azerbaijan, for two weeks of negotiations about climate finance for the energy transition. Argentina’s far-right leader has previously called the climate crisis a “socialist lie”, and during his election campaign last year he threatened to withdraw from the Paris agreement, though he has since backed down.

Continue reading...

Royalties earned from The Golden Mole, published in the US this week as Vanishing Treasures, will be given towards counteracting ‘the election of a climate-change denier’

British author Katherine Rundell will give all the royalties from one of her books to climate charities in response to the re-election of Donald Trump.

The author of bestsellers for children and adults has said she will donate 100% of author royalties earned from sales of The Golden Mole, her 2022 book on endangered species, “in perpetuity”. The book was published in the US on Tuesday under the title Vanishing Treasures. So far she said she has donated more than £10,000, and hopes it could eventually be much more.

Continue reading...

As the climate crisis advances unchecked, the work of federal agencies dedicated to protecting our health and the places where we work, play, worship, produce food, energy, and shop has become critical and are now at great peril. One such agency is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides the scientific bedrock of data needed to protect our health, homes, and livelihoods from climate change and other environmental threats.

This year’s heat waves, hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires for millions across the country shows that people in the United States rely on the scientific data and information that thousands of federal scientists tirelessly churn out and make available for decision-makers, emergency responders, and the general public. From providing operational meteorology for forecasting heat waves or hurricanes with days or weeks in advance, to longer-term assessment of global and regional climate patterns, federal agencies provide data that saves lives.

But if Project 2025–the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the incoming second Trump administration–is implemented, NOAA will be dismantled, downsized, or some parts of it put in private hands, compromising or outright eliminating the valuable services the approximately 11,000 employees who work there provide to the country.

In general, the new Trump administration presents grave threats to priorities on climate, energy, and justice. Project 2025 would be a disaster for the country and climate, as it intends to politicize the climate and environmental science that informs policy-making, promote an energy agenda based on fossil fuels, attack bedrock environmental protections, and eliminate the use of the Social Cost of Carbon in government estimates of the cost of climate change, among others.  In this post I will focus on Project 2025’s ill-advised designs for NOAA.

NOAA scientists’ data saves lives. Project 2025 would dismantle the agency.

NOAA’s work is crucial for monitoring and understanding climate change, and each of its various divisions play an integral role in protecting our ecosystems and communities. NOAA does a lot of important work in partnership with communities to protect them from climate and increasing resilience. For example, the Climate Adaptation Partnerships (CAP, formerly known as the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments, or RISA) program collaborates with researchers, decision makers, and communities to support resilience in the face of climate risks such as storms, droughts, flooding, extreme heat and wildfires. These partnerships have resulted in, for example, the creation of weather forecasting tools that help maritime operators make better decisions around vessel routes and schedules to navigate the icy waters of the Arctic. This fantastic story map showcases local CAP work with local communities to address extreme heat, dust storms, water/drought planning, fire and disaster planning, among others across the country.

NOAA has many key divisions that perform critical work to inform decision-making around climate change and its impacts. Here is a listing of the most important ones.

The National Hurricane Center‘s (NHC) mission is to “save lives, mitigate property loss, and improve economic efficiency by issuing the best watches, warnings, forecasts, and analyses of hazardous tropical weather and by increasing understanding of these hazards”. 

The NHC works closely with the National Weather Service (NWS), an office best known for its vital role in providing extreme weather alerts for the 122 Weather Forecast Offices across the country. Using data from satellites and advanced models, NWS and NHC warn the public of impending storms, floods, and heatwaves, helping save lives and minimize damage. Travel across the country by water, land, and air is safer in part thanks to timely extreme weather data. And NHC’s forecasts have been improving over the past few decades: storm track errors, a common metric of the accuracy of storm path forecasts, have gone down in recent years according to a report from the American Meteorological Society.

This hurricane season, NOAA’s forecasts were so accurate that Hurricane Milton made landfall only 12 miles north of the location the first forecast had predicted. Hurricane Helene’s loss of life was reduced in the Gulf Coast in part due to an early and accurate forecast that made possible evacuation orders well in advance of landfall in Florida. UCS’ own Danger Season tracker of extreme weather alerts and impacted communities depends on alerts issued by the NWS.

NWS’ Weather Forecasting Offices (WFOs) responsible for issuing extreme weather alerts cover all 50 states, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands (not shown in the map but covered by the San Juan WFO). https://www.weather.gov/srh/nwsoffices

The National Ocean Service (NOS) provides valuable data on economic, environmental, and social pressures impacting our coasts, Great Lakes, and oceans. From coastal erosion to pollution, NOS’s science helps states and communities manage these resources sustainably. 

The Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) program develops foundational climate science research to understand climate events such as tornadoes, hurricanes, ocean currents, El Niño and La Niña events, as well as the health of coastal environments. OAR plays a major role in the U.S. Global Change Research Program, tracking climate patterns and assessing long-term impacts of climate change for the country via the comprehensive National Climate Assessment.

The data produced is essential for global scientific understanding and informs local and national climate policies. In addition, OAR’s research improves weather forecasting models, helping to predict severe weather and air quality issues more accurately. These efforts save lives by providing advanced warning and helping communities prepare for hurricanes, wildfires, and air pollution events. OAR also monitors the Arctic’s rapidly changing environment, as it significantly influences global weather patterns and sea levels. From melting sea ice to shifts in marine life, this research is vital to understanding and adapting to climate impacts. 

Data from scientific agencies inform the National Climate Assessment, which in turn provides critical information for policymakers at all levels of government on existing and future climate change risks and opportunities in the US and its territories. https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/downloads/NCA5_Report-In-Brief.pdf 

The National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) operates NOAA’s satellite programs, which monitor climate and weather conditions globally. These satellites provide essential data on everything from sea surface temperatures to hurricane tracking, giving communities and policymakers the data needed to prepare for extreme weather. 

NESDIS manages the satellite programs that inform the U.S. Drought Monitor, an assessment of drought conditions used by, for example, the US Department of Agriculture to trigger disaster declarations and eligibility for low-interest loans for farmers across the country. Drought.gov.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) supports sustainable fishing practices and protects marine species, a critical part of maintaining balanced ocean ecosystems that can withstand climate pressures.  

The Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO) and NOAA Corps oversee NOAA’s fleet of ships and aircraft used for research and data collection, essential for on-the-ground climate and ecosystem studies.  

Project 2025 would eliminate unbiased data

Though NOAA does not make policy recommendations, the science and scientific data that it produces informs fact-based assessments of climate and other environmental threats that serve as the basis for policymakers to make sound policies. By creating and advancing climate science research, NOAA lays the unbiased, scientific bedrock of data and information for decision- and policy-making that can deliver for us a climate-resilient future. Investing in their work and supporting their mission to understand climate change will benefit current and future generations. 

But Project 2025 would change all of that, proposing that NOAA “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories” (see page 664 in Mandate for Leadership.) This is ill-advised for many reasons.

Climate-augmented extreme weather events have little regard for state boundaries, and are influenced by global and regional atmospheric and oceanic conditions. As such, nationwide data collection and analysis provides the most scientifically-accurate information that can be used to issue forecasts and projections to protect people across the country.

Privatization of public services–a change proposed by Project 2025 for NOAA’s weather forecasts–does not automatically equal better services. Handing essential services to private operators needs to come in with clear accountability and performance metrics to guarantee service levels, and must ensure that towns, counties, or states with less resources are not left without access to these critical data. Without equity in access to service, privatization could also mean that regions with higher risks for heat, hurricanes, or flooding risks, to name a few, could be forced to pay more to access weather forecasts or alerts.

Recent experiences in privatizing critical services such as electricity generation and distribution in the US territory of Puerto Rico, for example, have resulted in degraded, life-threatening reliability of a vital utility, largely due to lack of accountability and performance metrics in privatization contracts.

Why we need NOAA now more than ever

All public agencies, including NOAA, should be held accountable by the public and the rest of government to ensure they fulfill their mission and make the best possible use of taxpayers’ money. But this is not what the second Trump administration and Project 2025 intend to do.

If the first Trump government is any indication, the intention is to dismantle, intervene, and politicize NOAA in order to facilitate profit-making for industries that make more money the more they pollute and the less they have to invest in technologies or processes to reduce the harmful impacts of their activities. The fossil fuel industry can deny all they want, but the health and ecosystem impacts will not be willed away; they will just continue to be passed down to communities across the planet and the country, and the progress that has been made in addressing climate impacts and environmental quality and in reducing injustices and inequities will be rolled back.  

We need champions like NOAA to stand strong in the face of climate change. Their research, policies, and environmental protections are essential building blocks for a sustainable and just future. The first Trump government took a wrecking ball approach at perverting the roles and missions of scientific agencies and offices that protect us.

The incoming second Trump government has an intentional and dangerous blueprint in Project 2025 to repurpose the public services NOAA provides in order to line the pockets of the fossil fuel and other polluting industries. NOAA has a clear track record of providing the best science available to protect against loss of life and property in the face of worsening climate change and must be protected.

We need more timely updates in response to the rapid changes to the climate.

Negotiators agree that trillions are needed to help lower-income countries adapt and cope, but not on who should pay.

From olive oil to butter, extreme weather is pushing up the cost of living and having a dramatic political impact. Economists need a solution

In the US, where Donald Trump swept the board last week, it was the experience of sharply increasing essentials prices, from food to energy, that glued together the Republicans’ new electoral coalition. About 75% of those voting Republican reported that they had faced “hardship” or “severe hardship” as a result of price rises; only 25% of Democrats said the same. When Trump asked if Americans felt better now than they did four years ago, the answer for most was a clear no.

Price surges are having political impacts. In elections this year in three of the world’s largest economies, incumbent parties were hammered by voters angry about their helplessness in the face of the steeply rising cost of essentials.

James Meadway is the host of the podcast Macrodose

Continue reading...

Countries promised to move away from coal, oil and natural gas at last year’s climate summit. New research shows they’re burning more than ever before.

Global Carbon Budget report finds emissions from fossil fuels will rise to another record high this year

Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy, is now speaking at the leaders’ event, reports my colleague Damian Carrington, having “arrived late and a little out of breath.”

Meloni points out that the world population will be 8.5bn by 2030 and global GDP much higher, all bringing more demand for energy. As well as renewables, she says “gas, biofuels, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage” all have a role, though scientists are clear all fossil fuels must be phased out.

She also cites nuclear fusion as a potential “gamechanger”, though the joke that fusion is always 40 years away is not showing much sign of getting old. Large scale power from nuclear fusion is very unlikely to arrive in time to stop the global heating aleady wrecking communities around the world.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has missed her slot at the leaders summit part of Cop29. Meloni and the UK’s Keir Starmer are the only G7 leaders to attend.

Meanwhile, the Crown Prince of Kuwait, Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, pledges to cut his nation’s carbon emissions by 80% by 2040, which sounds very impressive but is very unlikely to include the state’s substantial oil and gas production.

Continue reading...

A building once celebrated for its innovation is deemed obsolete. Those trying to save it ask what its demolition means for British architecture.

Despite nations’ pledges at Cop28 a year ago, the burning of coal, oil and gas continued to rise in 2024

There is “no sign” of the transition away from burning fossil fuels that was pledged by the world’s nations a year ago, with 2024 on track to set another new record for global carbon emissions.

The new data, released at the UN’s Cop29 climate conference in Azerbaijan, indicates that the planet-heating emissions from coal, oil and gas will rise by 0.8% in 2024. In stark contrast, emissions have to fall by 43% by 2030 for the world to have any chance of keeping to the 1.5C temperature target and limiting “increasingly dramatic” climate impacts on people around the globe.

Continue reading...

During the US time out, Australia and its allies must remain steady and seek to deepen cooperation among themselves

The idea of open international exchange that framed the Australian reforms of the late 20th century and its subsequent economic success are being challenged in the 21st century. The challenge is intensified by the restoration of Donald Trump as president of the United States. He is committed to higher protection, tax cuts that will set record highs for budget deficits, a trade war with Australia’s largest trading partner with a risk of worse, and separation of the United States from the rules-based international trading system. He is also committed to withdrawal from international cooperation and domestic action to reduce climate-changing emissions of greenhouse gases. Global financial crisis is not out of the question.

These developments will damage Australian interests. Global long-term interest rates set a base against which Australian rates settle, and will be higher than they would otherwise have been. International inflation will be higher, increasing Australia’s own inflation challenge. Australia is the developed country that has most to lose from a failure to stop global heating. Australia has more to gain economically than any other country from success in the world achieving net zero carbon emissions, as an exporter of zero-carbon goods to countries which lack rich renewable energy and biomass resources of their own.

Continue reading...

Meteorologists track disturbance in Caribbean Sea predicted to become storm named Sara

Florida is at risk of being hit by yet another major tropical storm only weeks after Hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated towns across the state.

Meteorologists are currently tracking a new disturbance predicted to evolve into a storm in the Caribbean Sea. The storm, to be named Sara, will form in the western Caribbean later this week and may make a turn towards south Florida as a powerful hurricane next week if wind patterns change, according to the Hurricane Tracker App.

Continue reading...

António Guterres says global heating is super-charging disasters, and Cop hears warning of ‘inflation on steroids’

This year has been “a masterclass in human destruction”, the UN secretary general has said as he reflected on extreme weather and record temperatures around the world fuelled by climate breakdown.

António Guterres painted a stark portrait of the consequences of climate breakdown that had arisen in recent months. “Families running for their lives before the next hurricane strikes; workers and pilgrims collapsing in insufferable heat; floods tearing through communities and tearing down infrastructure; children going to bed hungry as droughts ravage crops,” he said. “All these disasters, and more, are being supercharged by human-made climate change.”

Continue reading...

At the U.N. climate conference in Azerbaijan, world leaders are gathered in a petrostate to discuss the uncertain future of global climate policy.