The year 2020 will be remembered for many reasons, including its record-breaking wildfires that turned San Francisco’s skies an apocalyptic shade of red and blanketed large parts of the West in smoke for weeks on end.
- By Jo Coghlan
Producers and retailers of everything from toilet paper to homes want you to believe that their product is “green”. More are “greenwashing” their products. Greenwashing is the misleading claims of environmental benefits...
We can learn a lot about climate change from Venus, our sister planet. Venus currently has a surface temperature of 450? (the temperature of an oven’s self-cleaning cycle) and an atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide (96 per cent) with a density 90 times that of Earth’s.
- By Peter Newman
Creative destruction “is the essential fact about capitalism”, wrote the great Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942.
Global emissions are expected to decline by about 7% in 2020 (or 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide) compared to 2019 — an unprecedented drop due to the slowdown in economic activity associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Salt storms are an emerging threat for millions of people in north-western Iran, thanks to the catastrophe of Lake Urmia.
Climate change is now climate crisis and a climate sceptic now a climate denier, according to the recently updated style guide of The Guardian news organisation.
We’re looking back at a trail of broken records, and the storms may still not be over even though the season officially ended on Nov. 30.
- By Philip James
Temperature and day length were traditionally accepted as the main determinants of when leaves changed colour and fell, leading some scientists to assume that warming temperatures would delay this process until later in the season.
- By Sapna Sharma
Every winter, the ice that forms on lakes, rivers and oceans, supports communities and culture. It provides transportation across winter roads, hunting and fishing, and recreational activities, such as lake ice festivals, skating, hockey and ice fishing.
The first climate models were built on fundamental laws of physics and chemistry and designed to study the climate system.
- By Erin Seekamp
With global travel curtailed during the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are finding comfort in planning future trips.
Greenland is the largest island in the world and on it rests the largest ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere. If all that ice melted, the sea would rise by more than 7 metres.
The Arctic Circle became unbelievably hot on June 20, 2020. In the Russian community of Verkhoyansk, temperatures topped 38C (over 100F), marking what may be the highest air temperature ever recorded within the Arctic.
The gold standard of research in science is the randomised controlled trial. The COVID-19 restrictions may at times seem random and most certainly feel like a trial. But are they controlled enough to learn from?
Australia doesn’t currently export renewable energy. But an ambitious new solar project is poised to change that. The proposed Sun Cable project envisions a ten gigawatt capacity solar farm...
With a recession looming, it’s time to come up with a good recovery plan. There is no point in simply reinventing an outdated economic model, and recent research by economists and health experts has underlined how instead a “green recovery” could benefit not just the climate but also human health and prosperity.
Australia doesn’t yet export renewable energy. But the writing is on the wall: demand for Australia’s fossil fuel exports is likely to dwindle soon, and we must replace it at massive scale.
High fire risk days have been common this year as the 2020 wildfire season shatters records across the West.
The idea of a green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is gaining traction around the world. The UK recently pledged to invest £350 million to cut emissions from heavy industry.
The onus to live sustainably has never been greater. It drives everyday actions from making sure we recycle our rubbish to carrying reusable cups and bottles with us wherever we go.
As California contends with its worst wildfire season in history, it’s more evident than ever that land management practices in the state’s forested mountains need major changes.
During lockdown, travel restrictions caused car and public transport use to plummet across the UK. On April 12 2020, the number of daily trips by car fell to 22%, compared to a typical day the year before. Public transport use dropped too.