Texas Tribune » Texas heat-related deaths reached a two-decade high in 2022 amid extreme temperatures
Meanwhile, Texas governor Greg Abbot has a plan to end water breaks for construction workers.
Category: Climate, Environment & Pollution (Page 7 of 10)
Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.
NDTV »
ESA » Using data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P mission, the image shows the average concentration of carbon monoxide for 1 May to 13 June. The extremely high concentrations, which are depicted in deep tones of orange, can be linked to active fires during the time. The image also shows how this air pollutant was carried as far as New York in the USA and over the Atlantic.
The Economist » As of June 14th, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, a not-for-profit, estimated that a total area of 5.4m hectares had been set alight—roughly the size of Costa Rica. This makes 2023 so far the worst year for wildfire damage since 1995, when it was 7.5m hectares. The weather is partly to blame. May was the hottest since 1940. It was also seventh-driest. Such conditions desiccate vegetation and help fires start and spread. Although the absolute number of fires has been only slightly higher than normal, each fire has grown far larger than it usually would. The area ablaze in Quebec is 217 times greater, for example.
NPR »
We didn’t know that the smoke was coming, for instance. On Tuesday morning, meteorologists predicted that the same moderate haze that has hung around all season would again hit the East Coast. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation put out an alert saying that the air quality index, or AQI, might rise to 150 across the state.
They did not forecast — nobody, as far as I can tell, did — that the worst air pollution in decades would soon wallop the state. By Tuesday night, New York City’s AQI had already reached 174, according to Environmental Protection Agency data. As I walked home in D.C., I could see tendrils of visible smoke hugging the upper stories of apartment buildings.
This prediction failure gave the ensuing response a halting, confused quality. How could such a massive event come out of nowhere? Not until Thursday afternoon — when the smoke had nearly passed — did the federal government advise its workers that they could telework or take vacation time to avoid the bad air. On Friday, New York closed in-person schools, just in time for blue sky to return.
The share of electric vehicles in sales of new passenger vehicles is set to more than double globally in the next few years — to 30% in 2026. Their penetration in some markets will be even higher, with EVs reaching 89% of sales in the Nordics, 52% in China and 42% in Europe. Our latest near-term EV sales outlook is brighter than what BNEF published last year, mostly due to policy changes in the US, where a major investment push sparked by the Inflation Reduction Act will help more than triple the share of EVs in new sales, to 28% by 2026.
But how’s your golf game, or Formula 1 championship doing?
Methane is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in heating up Earth on a 20-year timescale. Yet, just as carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere keep rising, despite everything our governments claim they are doing to curb it, so do levels of methane. This dangerous gas is now at two and half times pre-industrial levels.
Parks Canada employs ecologists, fire management and operations professionals, scientists, visitor safety technicians, and more.
In a challenge to the leader of the opposition, Prime Minister Trudeau said » ‘If he has a better plan, let him say it because we’ve been waiting a long time for it. But he has no plan to fight climate change, he still questions whether it exists while Canada is burning’
Environmental disasters know no boundaries. However, many right wing publications are blaming Canada for the poor air quality in the U.S.
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That is likely ramp up the pressure on Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Labour could win 470 seats at the election, with the Tories plummeting to just 129, according to the baseline scenario of an MRP poll by Focaldata, which asked 10,140 people in Great Britain how they intend to vote. That would give Labour a huge majority of more than 140 seats, it said.
Euronews » Luxembourg recently celebrated three years of free public transport. And, according to the people who live there, it has been a resounding success.
“We are very quickly about to lose the Arctic summer sea-ice cover, basically independent of what we are doing,” said Dirk Notz, a climate scientist at the University of Hamburg in Germany and one of the new study’s five authors. “We’ve been waiting too long now to do something about climate change to still protect the remaining ice.”
During a visit to Newfoundland last week, Canadian Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson stated that while exploration drilling is legally permitted within the refuge, extracting the resources and production is not.