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Both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) and the National Climate Assessment’s (NCA) reports provide continual corrections to our understanding of  Climate Change . Our quickly warming planet is undergoing vast changes that would be harder to ‘see’ if we didn’t have reports like these: FOURTH NATIONAL CLIMATE ASSESSMENT Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States  The National Climate Assessment (NCA) assesses the science of climate change and variability and its impacts across the United States, now and throughout this century. "Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities. The impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future—but the severity of future impacts will depend largely on actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the chang...

In what might be a craven diversionary tack to bury the release of the National Climate Assessment (NCA) Volume II on Black Friday, Trump tweeted on November 21 st “Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?” 'Absolute Disgrace': When No One Looking, White House Plans to Dump Major Climate Report on Black Friday The administration just announced Wednesday that the National Climate Assessment Volume II would be released Friday afternoon Environmental groups, journalists, and climate scientists are reacting to the Trump administration's decision to release a major climate report the day after Thanksgiving—a move some are describing as an effort to bury an assessment packed with an "astonishing amount of science," and they are hoping to see that effort backfire "bigly." "It's an absolute disgrace to bury the truth about climate impacts in a year that saw hundreds of Americans die during devast...

Sustainable development supports, and often enables, the fundamental societal and systems transitions and transformations that help limit global warming to 1.5°C. Such changes facilitate the pursuit of climate-resilient development pathways that achieve ambitious mitigation and adaptation in conjunction with poverty eradication and efforts to reduce inequalities (high confidence). {Box 1.1, 1.4.3, Figure 5.1, 5.5.3, Box 5.3} (Page 24, IPCC, 2018: Summary for Policymakers . In: Global warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, H. O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P. R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J. B. R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M. I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T...

The results of the US midterm elections, with the Democrats retaking the House and some governorships, are a victory in the sense that our country avoided falling into the abyss—a horrible place where our economics, our humanitarian values, and our politics run amuck. Supposedly, there will now be checks on Trump, his administration, and the GOP’s attempts to undermine our environmental health while trying to erase Climate Change from our nation’s responsibilities: With Democratic Majority, Climate Change Is Back on U.S. House Agenda  Fossil fuel supporters will still control the Senate, but the House will soon be able to turn a spotlight on climate change and Trump's retreat from responsibility. With their win of control of the U.S. House of Representatives, Democrats will now have the numbers to put climate change issues back on the congressional agenda. But the Republicans reinforced their firewall against any legislative efforts in the Senate by gaining at least two new m...

It is hard to understand why those who deny Climate Change haven’t at least explored how this crisis will affect their kids. Because if they had, we’d all be making the necessary changes to protect our children. We know what to do, we just need the will to do it. Kids’ Health and Climate Change  Our changing environment—caused by carbon pollution from coal, oil, and gas—is already affecting children’s health and changing how they grow up. Many people are familiar with climate change impacts like flooding and sea-level rise, but rising temperatures and decreased air quality are already affecting kids: Increasing asthma attacks and allergies; Creating food insecurity; Mental health problems; Developmental delays; and Changes in their genetic makeup. Kids are not little adults. Their health is impacted more by climate change. Children’s immune systems and organs are still developing, and they eat and drink more for their size. They also breathe at a faster rate, increasing their expos...

For about twenty years, the Rochester Regional Group of the Sierra Club ’s Earth Day forum has been a yearly opportunity to engage with the public on environmental issues. We’ve hosted local and state public officials responsible for our environment, local reporters, prominent speakers on protecting our Great Lake’s waters, and other issues like local food options. Our most attended forum was when Dr. Hansen talked to about 800 people on April 21. 2015 at Monroe County Community College. [Watch the entire speech, with an introduction by Dr. Susan Spencer. Very high-quality  video .] Clearly, who we invite to speak makes a difference. But we only have so many recourses at our disposal. Each year we try to figure out the most important environmental issue that is most likely to attract a large audience. (What’s the point of trying to communicate with the public, if they don’t show up?) I’ve been writing about the journey to Earth Day each year for quite a while, trying to build mome...

If it’s true that we are merely consumers (as some view our existence), and not the moral stewards of our planet, then consider humanity’s Climate Change options for our future. There are several climate scenarios to choose from—depending on your taste for disruption. Your choices are, as brilliantly and illustrated in this interactive chart, 1.5C, 2C, and beyond: The impacts of climate change at 1.5C, 2C and beyond  "Carbon Brief has extracted data from around 70 peer-reviewed climate studies to show how global warming is projected to affect the world and its regions. "  Scrolling through the above list is fascinating, like strolling up and down aisles in a grocery store. For example, do you want a 1.5C world where winter minimum temperatures in France will rise .09C? Or maybe a 3C world where rainfall will increase by 21% in Eastern Europe? Lots to choose from. But there’s a catch, actually many of them. First, costs vary considerably with your choices not only by dollars a...

The Dust Bowl , the worst environmental disaster in US history, sent the soil from millions of acres of the Great Plains into the atmosphere ruining a major ecosystem and many people’s lives. The disaster occurred in the early 1930’s just after the stock market crash of 1929. But crash didn’t affect the farmers until wheat prices dropped below what would keep a farmer’s family alive and the farmer’s tractor payments going. Thinking that if they produced more wheat they could make ends meet, the farmers tore up more soil to plant more wheat, which didn’t work because the wheat prices just kept falling. However, removing more of the Great Plains precious soil dramatically turned the Dust Bowl into a decade of hell. Instead of heeding the warnings of earlier dust storms and information from old timers that droughts were common, the farmers did exactly what would turn a problem into a major catastrophe. The Dust Bowl was an early warning that humanity could, intentionally or not, cause gre...

What set off John Quincy Adams to rail against slavery throughout his 16-year tenure at the U.S. House of Representative wasn’t necessarily the evils of slavery itself. The 6 th President of the United States spent most of his life (and his presidency) quietly disapproving of this ‘ peculiar institution ’ but he was hardly a life-long abolitionist. Like many other white men of his times, he thought it would just go away. No, it was the “"gag rule," which had prevented the House of Representatives from debating petitions to abolish slavery”( Wikipedia ) that really got Adams riled up because the rule was unconstitutional. Few cherished and held sacred our Constitution as Adams had. In pursuit of the gag rule’s appeal (which he won in 1844), Adams did become a fierce opponent of slavery doing much to embolden the abolitionists and hold our country’s feet to the fire over its original sin. Our country, a couple of decades before exploding into the cataclysm of the Civil War, s...

One of the significant questions we must ask ourselves at this time (though many decades ago would have been even better) is what should we save from Climate Change ? (Of course, for ethical reasons we cannot ask ((even in the darkest regions of our mind)) who should we save from Climate Change? No matter how drastic Climate Change becomes, I cannot imagine a point at which we would seriously contemplate a “ Lifeboat Ethics ” situation, where we save some but not others.) We should save everyone from Climate Change, especially people in the future. Before I talk about what we should save from Climate Change, we should acknowledge that to even pose such a question is to recognize there is now enough widespread awareness that Climate Change is occurring on a scale and time frame that makes this question possible. It would have been considered highly speculative to bring this question up twenty years ago but now people are acting on this: Saving Scotland’s Heritage From the Rising Seas ...

Humans, despite being the brainiest species ever to have lived, have an amazing penchant for getting bored by the very information that would keep them alive. Dismissing Climate Change warnings by climate scientists is like deer getting sick and tired of hearing wolves howling in the night and deciding to ignore the disturbing sounds altogether. Yet the numbers—the number of carbon dioxide molecules in our atmosphere in parts per million (as of today it’s 409 ) and the number of inches our oceans are rising—keep climbing and most people still continue business as usual. Climate Change presents some of the most intractable problems we face and some of these problems will be made insoluble if we don’t prioritize them. For example, if we keep responding to extreme weather in the same way we’ve done historically, we are never going to rebuild our homes in the aftermath of a deluge, and we’ll probably go broke trying. As we go further into the Climate Change Bottleneck, where our past envir...