Climate Change

"Extreme weather events, cuts to worker productivity and other effects of climate change could cause major global economic losses unless greenhouse gas emissions are significantly curtailed in the next few decades, according to a new working paper published Monday. The paper is the latest in a string of reports from the United Nations and global financial institutions and others showing that climate change constitutes a looming financial risk."

"Insurers are quietly reducing their exposure to fire-prone regions across the Western United States, putting new pressure on homeowners and raising concerns that climate change could eventually make insurance unaffordable in some areas."

"Wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest have hit a record number this year, with 72,843 fires detected so far by Brazil’s space research center INPE, as concerns grow over right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro’s environmental policy."

"They arrived on Sunday in parkas and ski hats, hiking across the rocky terrain where Iceland’s Okjokull glacier once flourished. Today it is a watery grave, which scientists and politicians say is the site of the nation’s first glacier lost to climate change."

"The White House, blindsided by a pact between California and four automakers to oppose President Trump’s auto emissions rollbacks, has mounted an effort to prevent any more from joining the other side."

"When the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona shuts down later this year, it will be one of the largest carbon emitters to ever close in American history."

"A federal appeals court shuffled the judges assigned to an upcoming climate case after an internal dispute arose over one panel member's apparent hostility to a climate science event."

"As the Democratic candidates for president made their requisite swing through the Iowa State Fair this week, they stumped near hay bales and posted about it on Twitter. They also brought an unprecedented focus on agriculture's connections with climate change—an issue that's getting more traction among rural Midwestern voters and farmers in the wake of massive flooding and heat waves."

"Scientists have measured big increases in the amount of methane, the powerful global warming gas, entering the atmosphere over the last decade. Cows or wetlands have been fingered as possible sources, but new research points to methane emissions from fossil fuel production—mainly from shale gas operations in the United States and Canada—as the culprit."

"ABOARD A NASA RESEARCH PLANE OVER GREENLAND — The fields of rippling ice 500 feet below the NASA plane give way to the blue-green of water dotted with irregular chunks of bleached-white ice, some the size of battleships, some as tall as 15-story buildings."