Author: Stephen Moss / Source: the Guardian As someone who once took a work-related day trip to San Francisco it is a little hypocritical of me to criticise others for taking long-haul flights for vanishingly brief holidays. But for all sorts of reasons it really is a terrible idea. The trend has been highlighted in Thomas Cook’s Holiday Report 2019, released this week, which notes “an increasing number of trips for less than seven days to long-haul destinations, with Mexico, San Francisco and other cities in the States rocketing in popularity.” “We call them bite-size breaks,” says a Thomas ..read more

Author: Megan Darby / Source: Climate Home News At the belt and road summit in Beijing, leaders talked up sustainable development, while investors forged ahead with polluting power projects in partner countries China will finance a major coal mine and power plant in Pakistan’s Thar desert (Photo: Zofeen T Ebrahim) Investment deals emerging from China’s belt and road summit 25-27 April show continued support for controversial coal projects, despite leaders’ green rhetoric. The official round-up of conference outcomes highlighted Chinese involvement in a recently opened coal mine and 660MW pow ..read more

Author: David Middleton / Source: Watts Up With That? Guest reality check by David Middleton 8 Ways To Teach Climate Change In Almost Any Classroom April 25, 2019 ANYA KAMENETZ NPR/Ipsos conducted a national poll recently and found that more than 8 in 10 teachers — and a similar majority of parents — support teaching kids about climate change. But in reality, it’s not always happening: Fewer than half of K-12 teachers told us that they talk about climate change with their children or students. Again, parents were about the same. The top reason that teachers gave in our poll for not coveri ..read more

Author: Willis Eschenbach / Source: Watts Up With That? Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach I took another ramble through the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) satellite-measured rainfall data. Figure 1 shows a Pacific-centered and an Atlantic-centered view of the average rainfall from the end of 1997 to the start of 2015 as measured by the TRMM satellite. Figure 1. Average rainfall, meters per year, on a 1° latitude by 1° longitude basis. The area covered by the satellite data, forty degrees north and south of the Equator, is just under 2/3 of the globe. The blue areas by the Equator ..read more

Humans are causing the mass extinction of animal species all across the globe and not enough is being done to stop it. A team of artists and activists look to expose the hidden world of extinction with never-before-seen images that will change the way we see the planet.  Racing Extinction is an eco-thriller that examines mankind’s role in mass extinction. Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Louie Psihoyos joins scientists, environmentalists, artists, and engineers to draw attention to this pressing issue. A RACE WE CAN’T AFFORD TO LOSE Utilizing state-of-the-art equipment, Oscar®-winn ..read more

Author: Ed Davey / Source: Climate Home News Comment: In a new book, Ed Davey finds examples the world can follow to respond to the moral calls from activists Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg Tigray province in Ethiopia was once the site of desperate famine, but careful land restoration has brought it back to life (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Yogesh Mhatre)) Some 35 years ago, in the year 1984, Ethiopia was in the midst of an acute famine, leading to the loss of at least 400,000 lives and an international humanitarian campaign which people remember to this day. The journalist Michael Bue ..read more

Author: Guardian correspondents / Source: the Guardian We are all doomed, it is said. Carbon dioxide is amassing in the atmosphere at levels not seen for millions of years when there were trees at the South Pole and Florida was under water. We have barely a decade to make amends. Protesters are on the streets. But huge numbers of people have not given up. Not yet. Call them the carbon cutters. They are companies and cities, niche groups and nations. They are commuters and communes, off-gridders and off-setters, investors and institutions – and countless individuals, cutting their meat intake ..read more

Author: Eric Worrall / Source: Watts Up With That? 4th of July Fireworks – Washington DC. Matthew Straubmuller from Bethesda, MD, USA [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons Guest essay by Eric Worrall According to meteorologist and green activist Eric Holthaus, any minute now we’ll have the affordable magic batteries we need to make electric cars useful and renewable power reliable. Batteries are key to clean energy — and they just got much cheaper Clean energy future might be closer than we previously thought ERIC HOLTHAUS APRIL 10, 2019 8:00AM (UTC) … In a little less than a year, the cost o ..read more

Author: Anthony Watts / Source: Watts Up With That? Climate alarmists tell us that the Earth has never been warmer, and that we can tell by looking at tree rings, treelines, and other proxy indicators of climate. Climate scientists claim the warmth is unprecedented. We’ve been told it is warming so fast, we have only 12 years left! Yet nature… Click here to read more The post Inconvenient stumps appeared first on MotherNature ..read more

Author: Eric Worrall / Source: Watts Up With That? Guest essay by Eric Worrall In the face of the utter failure of large investments in renewables to deliver CO2 reductions, greens are increasingly embracing nuclear power as the solution to climate change. Nuclear Power Can Save the World Expanding the technology is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonize the economy. By Joshua S. Goldstein, Staffan A. Qvist and Steven Pinker Drs. Goldstein and Qvist are the authors of “A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow.” Dr. Pi ..read more